Facebook revealed a number of features on Wednesday that give users more flexibility with their information, more control over how third parties access their data, and a new way to handle their social groups.
The first announcement is that user info at Facebook is no longer being held hostage on the site—the company announced a new data portability initiative that lets users more easily move their information elsewhere. And we're not just talking about basic data like education and job info; Facebook will allow you to download your wall posts, photos, videos, friend lists, events, and all manner of other details wrapped up in a handy zip file so that it can be archived or posted somewhere else.
"People own and have control over all info they put into Facebook, and 'Download Your Information' enables people to take stuff with them," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the company's press event.
The second announcement was that Facebook is rolling out a new app dashboard that will show which apps you're using and what kind of information they have accessed about you. In fact, this isn't just limited to Facebook apps—it includes websites that have accessed your information through Facebook Connect as well. The dashboard will be able to show you every API call that has been made to your profile, and allow you to change permissions over time as you see fit.
Finally, Facebook announced that it's making a change to how users group their friends. In the past, the company has offered lists, but apparently only five percent of users have actually categorized their friends into lists. Conversely, 95 percent of Facebook users have been tagged in a photo, usually by their friends, which has led to the idea of creating friend groups.
People will be able to add friends to a social group and then have group chats, document editing, and other group features that will be isolated from users' main Facebook walls. If you don't want to be part of a group you've been added to, though, you don't have to be—Zuckerberg said that you can leave a group and you won't be asked to join it again unless you specifically request it. So, if you want to create a group for your family, a group for your sort-of-friend coworkers, and a group for your old college buddies, you can, and then keep all of those interactions separate.
Zuckerberg said the whole point of groups was to mirror the social groupings of people in real life, but remarked that they won't replace friend lists for those who still use them. The company doesn't want to obliterate the hard work that users have already put into creating lists, but plans to focus on groups from here on out.
Advocacy groups are always on Facebook's case for making privacy settings too complicated for users, but it seems (at least upon first blush) as if the latest changes are very user-friendly. So far, there's little criticism about the app dashboard or the info downloading initiative.
reader comments
23