Facebook To Roll Out New Privacy Controls To Its 350 Million Users, Kills Regional Networks

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just written an open letter to Facebook users regarding a privacy overhaul that is due to hit the site in the next few weeks. Soon, users will be able to selectively choose, on a per-post basis, who can see the content they post to the site. Facebook is also going to remove regional networks entirely, largely because some of those networks (like China) consist of millions of users, which makes them useless from a privacy standpoint. If these changes sound familiar, it’s because Facebook actually announced them way back in July. Zuckerberg also notes that Facebook now has 350 million users — it has added a whopping 50 million of them in the last two and a half months.
Alongside the regional network change, privacy controls will be simplified. As Facebook rolls out the new privacy settings, users will be presented with a page designed to walk them through the change. Depending on your current privacy level, Facebook will make recommendations, though you’ll be able to change them as usual.
The way Facebook deploys its privacy recommendations will have a huge impact on the site’s future. Right now, most people don’t share their content using the ‘everyone‘ option that Facebook introduced last summer. If Facebook pushes users to start using that, it could have a better stream of content to go against Twitter in the real-time search race. But Facebook has something to lose by promoting ‘everyone’ updates: given the long-standing private nature of Facebook, they could lead to a massive privacy fiasco as users inadvertently share more than they mean to.
Back when Facebook first announced the changes, it sounded like the site might go in that direction. But it may have had a change of heart.