Facebook is continuing their campaign to create a deeper social media management experience with new, in-depth privacy features. The company announced the capabilities on their official blog Tuesday, which will allow users to selectively share posts with fewer clicks. The new privacy settings bring a streamlined approach to once complicated options.
The first major change is that Facebook has placed the “View Profile As” function directly on the profile page, allowing users to instantly see how friends and those searching for them see their page. Before the update the capability was hidden in privacy settings.
Another alteration came to Facebook’s tagging system. Before, users could tag friends in posts, locations and photos without review. The posts would immediately become visible to all other users. Tags must now be approved before being made public. Photo tagging gets the biggest overhaul, allowing users recourse if they dislike a photograph. If you’re unhappy with a tag, you can now remove it, ask the poster to take the photo down or even block the offending user. This is a vast change from the preceding un-tag function.
The most prominent change users will notice is that they can now alter their sharing preferences directly on the share bar. While this function was previously available, it has now been revamped, allowing for greater choices.
Facebook’s new privacy settings are a response to the growing popularity of social media companies such as Google and Twitter, but will the changes be enough to compete with Google+ and it’s much more specific “Circles” system?