Facebook has been revising its content and settings as of late with the latest addition affecting new users to the social network. What is surprising about this new addition is that it encourages what Facebook has been not been known for recently and that is more privacy. Those who sign up will not have their status updates show up on their timeline available to the general public, but only to friends by default.
This means that they will not have to manually change their privacy settings in order to keep updates tied to their friends. It can definitely benefit users who are unfamiliar with the way Facebook works and may not know that everything they shared was open to anyone who clicks on their names.
"Your profile should feel like your home on the web -- you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don't want, and you should never wonder who sees what's there," Facebook previously said on its blog. "The profile is getting some new tools that give you clearer, more consistent controls over how photos and posts get added to it, and who can see everything that lives there."
However, that was more than two years ago that Facebook posted this and it is only now that Facebook really added privacy features from the get-go for new users, rather than force them to tinker with settings to keep their timeline tied to friends. It is finally getting that new users should be exposed to privacy rather than publicity.
"While some people want to post to everyone, others have told us that they are more comfortable sharing with a smaller group, like just their friends," the company says. "We recognize that it is much worse for someone to accidentally share with everyone when they actually meant to share just with friends, compared with the reverse."
Facebook is a social network that is open to a wide range of users and social groups. Some people want to use it as a way to generate new friends or get attention, while others want to only share with those they are comfortable with and keep it in a tight-knit network. This new update should address this.
Facebook currently has 1.3 billion users worldwide and it is looking for new ways to monetize this huge audience. Lets hope sharing private data isn't one of these ways, or selling the data to advertisers. Lately, the company has seen growth potential and ways to generate income in mobile and Web ads, as well as third-party Web apps.
