All Things Cahill

Facebook Privacy Settings – a Must Read for Facebook Users

The Unofficial Facebook Blog brings us a post that all Facebook users should read “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.”  It’ll help you navigate the proper settings for your Facebook account and help you to find a way to show your work compatriots one level of info, while showing your personal friends another.  It’ll also allow you to friend your family members without worrying they’ll be reading about all your antics with your friends (Hint, hint, hint – Christina?  This one’s for you…).

A sample:

I can’t tell you how many people are not aware of their friend lists. For those not aware of what friend lists are, Facebook describes them as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can create Friend Lists for all of your organizational needs, allowing you to quickly view friends by type and send messages to your lists.”

There are a few very important things to remember about friend lists:

• You can add each friend to more than one friend group
• Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
• Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them

I’ve been working with social media for a long time, and frankly, I’ve seen few things that were so convoluted and hard to understand as Facebook Privacy Settings. I suspect the space shuttle, or even an IBM Websphere server might fall into that group, but not much else.

Tags: facebook, Facebook Privacy