Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes and the milestone in a blog post late Tuesday, saying new privacy features will let users determine who gets to see pictures, comments, videos and other material in profiles.<\/p>\n
“We’re adding something that many of you have asked for – the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload,” Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n
“To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information.”<\/p>\n
When Facebook launched in early 2004 as an online network for college students to stay connected, the model centered on sharing information with “networks” of school friends.<\/p>\n
That online community model endured, being expanded to companies and geographic regions.<\/p>\n
About half of Facebook users are members of regional networks, with some regions encompassing entire countries, such as India and China.<\/p>\n
“Some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy,” Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n
“The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.”<\/p>\n
In coming weeks Facebook members will be asked to review and update personal privacy settings in a streamlined new format, according to Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n