March 18, 2009 by Matt Thomas
Facebook has granted users power over their own privacy, with a range of new options to control exactly how public/private you want your profile to be. The measures are being widely viewed as a response to the outrage that Facebook caused amongst its users last month when it changed major sections of its user agreement without properly consulting its members.
From today, the new changes will allow users to decide whether or not they want their profile to be viewable by everyone on Facebook. The social networking leader already provides privacy settings that allow you to limit which of your friends are allowed to see your profile and your updates, this change is really more aimed at those who actually want to broadcast their profile to a wider audience.
In addition to improving transparency regarding its processes this is being seen by the industry as a way of pulling the rug out from underneath twitter by allowing users to utilise Facebook as a mass marketing tool in the same way that they use twitter. This fits in with their recent updates to the system which have allowed companies to set up official business pages for the first time.
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