Facebook's New Privacy Settings

Today Facebook have announced several improvements that make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want. 

Inline Profile Controls

Before: Most of the settings on profiles were a few clicks away on a series of settings pages. 

Now: Content on profiles, from hometown to your latest photo album, will appear next to an icon and a drop-down menu. This inline menu lets you know who can see this part of your profile, and it can changed with just one click.

 

Content Tag Review

Before: Anyone who could see your photos or posts could add tags to them.

Now: You have the option to review and approve or reject any tag someone tries to add to your photos and posts.

 

View Profile As

Before: Facebook wanted to know what your profile looked like to others, but the tool for doing this was behind the scenes.

Now: This tool is now on the top of your profile where it's easier to access.

 

When You Share

In addition to the profile changes, it will now be more visually straightforward to understand and control who can see your posts at the time you share them. Facebook are also broadening the functionality of the sharing tool, now if you want to make your posts more expressive, they made it simple to add location and tag the people you're with.

Before: Controls for who could see your information on Facebook was on a settings page a few clicks away.

Going Forward: The control for who can see each post will be right inline. For each audience, there is now an icon and label to help make it easier to understand and decide who you're sharing with. Also, when you tag someone, the audience label will automatically update to show that the person tagged and their friends can see the post.

This drop down menu will be expanding over time to include smaller groups of people you may want to share with, like co-workers, friend lists you've created, and Groups you're a member of. These will make it easy to quickly select exactly the audience you want for any post. 

 

Word Change: "Everyone" to "Public"

Before: You had the option to share a post with Everyone, which meant that anyone on the internet might be able to see it. 

Now: We are changing the name of this label from Everyone to Public so that the control is more descriptive of the behavior: anyone may see it, but not everyone will see it. This is just to make the setting more clear, and it's just a language change.

 

Change Your Mind After You Post? 

Before: Once you posted a status update, you couldn't change who could see it.

Now: Now you'll be able to change who can see any post after the fact. If you accidentally posted something to the wrong group, or changed your mind, you can adjust it with the inline control at any time.

 

Tag Who You're With, or What You Want to Talk About

Before: You could only tag someone if you were friends with them, and you could only tag a Page if you had liked it.

Now: You can add tags of your friends or anyone else on Facebook. If you are ever tagged by a non-friend, it won't appear on your profile unless you review and approve the post.

 

Tag Locations in Posts

Before: You could only "check in" to locations using the Places feature on a smart phone.

Now: You can add location to anything. Lots of people use Facebook to talk about where they are, have been or want to go. Now you can add location from anywhere, regardless of what device you are using, or whether it is a status update, photo or Wall post.

 

Removing Tags or Content

Before: Facebook asked people had different ideas of what removing a tag actually did and different motivations for wanting to remove them.

Now: There are severals options for removing a post these options are: removing from your profile, removing the tag itself, messaging the photo owner or tagger, and requesting the content get taken down.

These changes will begin in the coming days. When they reach you, you'll see a prompt for a tour that walks you through these new features from your homepage.

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This Week in Social

Google+ Hangouts Can Now Be Initiated From YouTube, Foursquare allows to check into events, LinkedIn New App, Facebook on this day and Watch the Big Lebowski

Google+ Hangouts Can Now Be Initiated From YouTube

Google has quietly rolled out yet another feature of its Google+ social network, letting users click Share from any YouTube video, revealing an icon that suggests watching the video with friends in a Google+ hangout. Google didn’t formally announce this new feature, instead revealing it via product manager Brian Glick on Google+, where he casually mentioned it like so "You can now start a Google+ Hangout with a YouTube video, directly from YouTube. Watch with your friends. :)"

Read more on this story at Mashable.

 

Foursquare allows you to check into events

It’s one of the most common check-ins on foursquare, you head off to a movie theater, check in, and type in ‘Harry Potter’ to tell people what you’re seeing. Or check in to a stadium and shout ‘Patriots game’ or ‘Lady Gaga concert.’ Sometimes, people will even create a new venue, like ‘U2 at the Meadowlands,’ to make sure they share the concert with all their friends. In moments like this, a place is often more than just a place; so today, Foursquare has started to pull major events into their database allowing users to check in and see if their friends are their.

Read more on the Foursquare blog.

 

LinkedIn rolls out new mobile app

LinkedIn is becoming an essential part of how millions of people do business, they designed a completely new user experience to help professionals be even more productive on the go. The mobile app is focused on eight or nine different core functions, the new LinkedIn apps have four key areas: Updates, Inbox, You and Groups. The updates feature lets you view a newsfeed of activity from your network. It also lets you check out news from LinkedIn Today.

For more on this story visit the LinkedIn Blog.

 

Facebook 'on this day' feature

The world’s largest social network is getting nostalgic! Facebook has quietly rolled out a new feature that displays status updates you posted exactly one or two years ago. The feature appears as a small box in the right-hand column above the advertising, either titled “On This Day in 2010″ or “On This Day in 2009.” The “On This Day” box appears typcially whilst you’re browsing a photo album.

Catch up with this story at Mashable.

 

Watch The Big Lebowski on Facebook

The cult classic The Big Lebowski is now available to rent on Facebook. Coinciding with the film’s Blu-ray release, fans of the Coen brothers comedy can rent the film directly from The Big Lebowski Facebook fan page. Facebook continues to gain ground as a movie rental platform. Last month, Paramount Pictures brought the Jackass film series to Facebook and Warner Bros. continues to make more titles available on the social network. For this release, Universal Pictures is doing something more unique with its rental offering by giving fans a way to interact and share their favorite parts of the film online.

Read more on this at IndieWire.

 

Have you noticed the 'On this day' feature? Would you watch the Big Lebowski on Facebook? What are your views on the new LinkedIn app? Please leave your comments in the section below...

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This Week in Social

Facebook Groups Topics, Religion Dominates Facebook, Twitpic Owner Launches Twitter Clone, London Riots Social Media Helps the Cleanup, Klout adds more services and Twitter adds Photo Sharing for All Users

Facebook Clusters Topics in Newsfeed

Facebook has been trying to figure out its News Feed since it launched in 2006, and of course because it’s Facebook every time it changes absolutely anything it seems to throw users into turmoil. Earlier this week the company launched the latest incremental step in its quest to try to make sense of the sheer amount of realtime data it processes aggregated topic clusters in the Facebook newsfeed. Now should your friends be sharing posts with similar themes,such as going to see the same movie, you’ll see a single news feed story that lumps them together.

For more information on this story visit TechCrunch.

 

Religion Dominates Facebook

Music, sports, and politics create quite a noisy racket on the social network, but it is clearly religion that once again gets users to interact with pages the most. From Jesus Daily’s thunderous week to a returning option looking to prove it isn’t a one appearance wonder. With an untouchable one million engagement increase from the previous week, Jesus Daily earns its top spot with an immense 3,782,249 interaction total. Holding its ground in fourth, The Bible sees 1,014,523 responses.

More on this story is available at AllFacebook.

 

Twitpic Owner Launches Twitter Clone

The founder of Twitter photo sharing site Twitpic, has launched a new site, called Heello the site wasn’t open to the public for a year later but it looks like the curtains have finally been drawn on Heello. At first glance, it seems a lot like Twitter. You create a username, which is @'username' and you can connect with Twitter and Facebook. You share what you are doing on the site with 'Pings' which is a140 character update where you can attach a video, photo and/or your location.

More on this story is available at TechCrunch.

 

Klout adds Blogger, Tumblr, Instagram and Last.fm

Klout has now doubled the number of services it measures to determine your online influence adding Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, Last.fm and Tumblr to its scoring system. Klout which celebrated its three-year anniversary this week originally only took Twitter activity into consideration. Two years later Klout added Facebook. In June, it began factoring in LinkedIn and within the past month it integrated Foursquare and YouTube into its algorithm.

More on this story on the Klout Blog.

 

London Riots Cleanup Influenced By Social Media

After days of riots in London and across the rest of the United Kingdom, thousands of Britons and worldwide supporters were taking to social networks to help reclaim the streets of Britain. While rioters took to the underground paths of BlackBerry Messenger to organise, the highly spreadable platforms of Twitter and Facebook have shown to be the perfect platforms for mobilising the cleanup organisers and followers in the early aftermath of the rioting.

You can read up on this story at Mashable. 

 

Twitter Rolls Out Photo Sharing for All Users

The new feature allows users to add images to their tweets. Users will now find a camera icon on the bottom of the “What’s Happening?” box on Twitter. Clicking it will let users select a picture to upload, which they can then preview before sending it to the world. Tweets containing photos include a link to pic.twitter.com, along with a thumbnail of the attached picture.

More on this story at TechCrunch.

 

What are your views on social media's role in the UK riots? Do you discuss or like religion on your Facebook page? Has your Kluot score been influenced by the new services? Please leave your comments in the section below...

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This Week in Social

Facebook wants your expected child, Google+ should be fatest growing social network, Old Twitter is dead, Germany wants Facebook's facial recognition features halted, Sports stars using social media and Foursquare self service pages

Facebook gives option to add expected child as family member

 

Facebook members have been able to add other members of their family to their profile for some time but the new option allows the addition of an unborn child. This feature gives parents the option to add a due date and even name the child. Apparently too many parents were creating “illegal” fake profiles for their yet unhatched offspring and setting their age to 13, with this being the legal age to use Facebook.

You can read the story from TechCrunch.

 

Google+ now has 25 millions active users

In just one month, Google+ has captured 25 million visitors, making it the fastest social network to reach such a number. Growing at around 1 million users per day Google+ has outshined Facebook, which took three years to grab 25 million people, and Twitter, which took a little more than 30 months to reach that level.

You can read more on Google+'s rate of growth at Mashable. 

 

The Old Twitter is dead

Back in June, Twitter announced that they would be decommissioning the old platform from 3rd of August. While the new version has been out since last September, users still had permission to use the old version if they chose to, until now. May you RIP Old Twitter.

More about this story can be read at Media Bistro.

 

Germany claims Facebook are breaking EU privacy laws

A German privacy expert has claimed that Facebook's facial recognition software is violating German and European Union laws. Facebook uses individual biometric data that allows users to locate new friends after discovering their identity. The feature 'recognises' faces in photos so that you can connect a face in a photo, shortening the tedious tagging process.

All Facebook continues with a good article about this topic.

 

Sports stars in need of social media training

Joey Barton's public bust-up at Newcastle has resulted in the midfielder being transfer-listed for free. It has highlighted the impact social media can have on a professional athlete's career. After questioning his own club's transfer policy on his personal Twitter page, Newcastle United have issued him with a two week fine. The current Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew, admits he risks being seen as a dictator by his disgruntled players after firing a warning shot at his Twitter-mad squad - a legal letter designed to stamp-out the kind of cyber-ranting that has left Barton's future on Tyneside hanging by a thread.

 

Foursquare pages are now self service

Foursquares business pages are now self service, meaning that brands can now independently update their profile pages on the located based service.The updates make it easier for brands to publish information for consumers such as discount promotions and photos, via their Foursquare pages. For more information please visit Foursquare blog.

 

The Man Without a Face

Below contains a mini film that is play on The Man Without a Face that was created by writers and directors Dan De Lorenzo and Ben Stumpf, promotes the merits of being “untaggable,” which seem to include writing with pens, coming up with words sans Google and understanding why men and women like each other.

Have you still been using the Old Twitter? Would you update your Facebook family with an unborn child? Should sports stars be told not to use social media for their outbursts? Do you feel that your privacy is at risk with Facebook facial recognition? Please leave your comments in the section below...

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