Facebook rolling out site redesign, download my data, and updated privacy settings

General

Today, Facebook held a press event where they detailed several new features the company will be rolling into their popular social networking site. As Facebook explains: “Until now, Facebook has made it easy to share with all of your friends or with everyone, but there hasn’t been a simple way to create and maintain a space for sharing with the small communities of people in your life, like your roommates, classmates, co-workers and family.” Facebook is launching a suite of tools that will allow you to better organize groups of friends and control what information is shared with those groups. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted, “there is no need for all my friends to know that I had a killer run this morning, so I made a running group.” The “groups” function will play a much more prominent roll in the Facebook experience and allow users to better manage shared content and smaller circles of friends. Next, the company revealed a feature that allows users to download all of their Facebook data locally to a computer.

We’ve built an easy way to quickly download to your computer everything you’ve ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.

If you want a copy of the information you’ve put on Facebook for any reason, you can click a link and easily get a copy of all of it in a single download.

Facebook will also launch an enhanced privacy dashboard that will make it easier for users to revoke authorized applications and show other security related information (e.g. when the last time your Facebook data was accessed by an application).

All this will be wrapped in a new, but familiar, site refresh. Facebook has several videos detailing the new features on their site; hit the read link to check them out.

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24 Comments
  • MacMan

    OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!! Can’t wait

  • Rusty

    SECOND! – Now I’m actually interested in Facebook!

  • superchunk

    Sounds like good stuff. Can’t wait to see it rolled out and detailed by privacy groups.

  • Mgl323

    Looking Good.

  • Ameeelia.

    This will come in handy for those that like to spam the crap out of their / their friends’ walls with FarmVille requests (myself included). Now I can make a dedicated group where I say things that make sense to them (need pumpkins for pie and co-op) and spare those that don’t play, so they don’t have to block me from their feeds anymore.. :)

    • CMC

      Hiding Farmville is pretty easy, just click the “X” next to any posts and then hide. It actually makes FB usable once that’s done :)

    • jmm

      You can do that at the moment using lists and editing your sharing settings for each post.

    • http://www.TheEasyLifestyle.com Anita

      Best and fastest way to make that junk disappear is when you receive the request – look to the bottom left corner of the request. There is a beautiful phrase there – “block this application” … works like a charm! :-D Enjoy!

  • counsel

    Real friends don’t need a webpage to stay in touch. If you do, what kind of acquaintance are you exactly?

    Now you want me to divide my contacts? You really have aikido friends you only want to talk with if the topic is aikido? Really?

    My guess this “service” simply lets facebook better sell ad space and so Facebook knows more about you than your friends could ever know…

    • superchunk

      FB is a lot more than just keeping in touch with real friends.

      It allows my family, who don’t live close to each other, to easily stay in touch and more importantly share pictures/video easily.

      The contact subGroups make a good point to separate family/friends/close friends/coworkers/fell game players/ etc.

    • MacWoman

      Ok Kip Drowdry, we all know you hate facebook because you have 0 friends.

      • MacMan

        Seriously ??? Can’t come up with a better name ?

      • MacBoy

        We’ll all just assume that you don’t watch South Park.

    • EndlessCT9A

      Good insight. Segmentation and behavioral targeting = higher CPM rates. If I create a “mobile fanatic” group and post a bunch of shit about mobile handsets, carriers, etc, for example, then targeted ads that are relevant to this interest area can be served… and Facebook can charge higher ad rates as a result. Don’t mistake this set of “improvements” as that… Facebook’s still in the red as far as P&L goes and if they are indeed going to do an IPO in the near future, it would be wise to shore up the balance sheet as much as possible to maximize market valuation.

    • http://www.TheEasyLifestyle.com Anita

      Facebook works best not for those that we are close to and interact with already. It works best for those of us that have moved, live a rather hectic existence where there aren’t enough hours to have a conversation with everyone in our life that we would like to stay in contact with … like old classmates from 30 yrs ago, life carried you apart & you’ve lost contact … or distant family members that you would like to communicate with more than 1ce per month -now you may re-connect without a huge investment of precious time or $$ – internet communication is free …
      Here a great tip: Facebook is totally voluntary – if it upsets you so much – don’t subscribe to it, don’t go there. Here’s a thought- A wise man once taught me that when we feel hostility toward anything or anyone that is it really a sign that whatever we’re angrily reacting to is something we need to embrace in ourselves.

  • Ryan

    Every time facebook updates I hate it. Facebook was good before and every update makes it worse and more complicated

  • T

    Sooo… are they saying I can “Friend” work colleagues and still talk shit about them by putting them in the right group? Yes, please.

    • M

      Totally agree. Now I can have a group for my family that keeps trying to add me so they can see baby pics, and have a different group for friends that I want to keep informed about the raves I’m DJing at. Awesome!

  • Nico

    I’m looking forward to this. Different groups will be.awesome. I’ll be able to post phone stuff without my old school friends laughing at me and calling me obsessed. I’ll friend a bunch of people from the phone forums too, something I haven’t done, just because I don’t want them reading posts directed at family and close friends.

  • sirpaul

    Has anyone managed to get to the download link yet? it still hasn’t rolled out for my profile.

  • teddy

    sweet. now i get to hear facebook fanatics go nuts over a redesign again.

  • 3 Phones Jugglin

    And this stops people from being able to “Google” my name and have a Link to my FB w/ friends attached to it how?

  • jdubb

    Cool, I just hope they don’t completely change the stuff we’re already used to just for the hell of it like they have done in previous updates, ie UI and other functions.

  • http://www.hot.com.au/ Luis Garcia

    “Facebook will also launch an enhanced privacy dashboard that will make it easier for users to revoke authorized applications and show other security related information ”

    This is the feature that intrigues me the most. The groups thing seems pretty interesting too.

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