Every time Facebook sneezes, there is an uproar. New groups pop up with people mad about the type of sneeze, how the sneeze will affect them, blah, blah, blah. Today, Facebook announced many pending changes that will start to cycle themselves through sections of users over the next months. Basically, they make it easier for users to manage privacy and share information past their networks. Here’s a brief summary of what you need to know as a blogger or marketer using Facebook.
Facebook Privacy: Simplicity
Rather than managing your own privacy settings over many different areas, the recent changes will trim down all privacy controls to one page. Managing your privacy will be much simpler. What marketers need to know is that people can now shut you off quicker and easier if you are pitching, pitching, pitching. Privacy will include sweeping options to share with everyone and groups in between, as well as customizing to share with only specific people. You’ve been warned.
Facebook Regional Networks: Gone
Thank goodness. They never really made any sense to me anyways. After all, the social web is about no boundaries, no borders. People are no longer stuck on regions, locations. Particularly those finding the empowerment of social networking. If my recollection is correct, most users were not even assigning themselves to regional networks (some numbers I’ve seen close to half not joining). What this means is not much, except that stats and regional based information will be no more.
Facebook’s Lessons Learned: Transitions
Since faultering several times in simply implementing sweeping changes and seeing the backlash, of course, Facebook also announced transition tools and notices that will help you “ease” into all these changes without being side-swipped. When the changes hit your profile, you’ll notice requests to reaffirm your privacy settings and more information about the changes. In fact, they have a whole transition tool itself that will help you in the process of understanding the new settings/changes.
And, don’t worry. According to their blog post, if you’re happy with how your profile and privacy are set, the transition tool is automatically set to respect that. So, there’s no need to form a group to gripe about it 
Check out the full details on Facebook’s blog:
Improving Sharing Through Control, Simplicity, and Connection
About the Author...
Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!
