The biggest social-networking website in the world, Facebook, has announced it has again re-jigged its privacy settings, in a bid to make this section of the website easier to understand.
Facebook seems to be changing its privacy settings more times than it changes its socks at the moment, but the new rules soon to be implemented are said to be the site's simplest yet.
Broadcast now
In a blog post titled 'Improving Sharing Through Control, Simplicity and Connection', Chris Kelly from Facebook outlines the new options, stating that:, "We're committed to giving people even greater control over the information they share and the audiences with whom they share it.
"At one extreme, we believe people should have the tools to 'broadcast' information across the web and make it available to everyone."
This is a blatant push for the site to become a Twitter-lite instant blogging service, where users can let anyone, anywhere know just what they are having for lunch.
Kelly also says that some people obviously don't want to broadcast their life to the world, so Facebook will also "give people the power to limit who should receive any particular piece of information they want to share". Hmm, didn't they do that before?
Three settings
What it means to Facebook users, essentially, is that there's now three settings to choose from: Open, Recommended and Limited.
Interestingly the Recommended setting allows anyone to view what you are publishing, unless you set the privacy on individual posts.
It's a small but significant change, and one that will open Facebook up to micro-blogging. Something its newest rival Twitter does very well.
