Facebook Makes Changes To Settings

  • Most changes can be made on front page
  • Drop down menu to expand
  • Controlling tagging is made easier

Facebook says its latest changes to the website are claimed to make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with the people you want. Current privacy settings allow this to happen anyway, but Facebook says the new version is a lot easier to navigate, says VP of Product Chris Cox.

The main change is moving most of your controls from a settings page to being inline, next to the posts, photos and tags they affect. Plus there are several other updates here that will make it easier to understand who can see your stuff (or your friends') in any context.

Your profile should feel like your home on the web — you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don’t want, and you should never wonder who sees what’s there. The profile is getting some new tools that give you clearer, more consistent controls over how photos and posts get added to it, and who can see everything that lives there.

Before these new changes most of the settings for stuff on your profile were a few clicks away on a series of settings pages. Now, content on your profile, from your hometown to your latest photo album, will appear next to an icon and a drop-down menu. This inline menu lets you know who can see this part of your profile, and you can change it with one click.

Under old guildlines, photos you were tagged in would show up on your profile as soon as you were tagged. One of the top requests we've heard is for the ability to approve these tags before they show up on your profile. Now, uesrs can choose to use the new tool to approve or reject any photo or post they are tagged in before it’s visible to anyone else on their profile.

Users will also now have the option to review and approve or reject any tag someone tries to add to your photos and posts. Also the tool that shows you what a profile looks like to others is now on the top of the profile where it’s easier to access.

In addition to the profile changes, it will now be more visually straightforward to understand and control who can see your posts at the time you share them. We're also broadening the functionality of the sharing tool: now if you want to make your posts more expressive, we've made it simple to add location and tag the people you’re with.

Also, now, the control for who can see each post will be right inline. For each audience, there is now an icon and label to help make it easier to understand and decide who you’re sharing with. Also, when someone is tagged, the audience label will automatically update to show that the person tagged and their friends can see the post.

This dropdown menu will be expanding over time to include smaller groups of people you may want to share with, like co-workers, Friend Lists you've created, and Groups [IU3] you’re a member of. These will make it easy to quickly select exactly the audience you want for any post.

If you’re posting to Facebook from a phone or app that does not yet support inline controls, your setting will be the same as it is today. You can change this with a new setting available on your privacy settings page.