with Skype or even a phone of its very own, Facebook instead unveiled a revamped
groups feature on Wednesday, along with new tools to audit how apps are
using personal data and to download all of a user's data to a
browser-viewable file.
The groups feature was the highlight of the
announcement from Facebook's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters. It allows
users to create personal groups of their own choosing that correspond
with social circles or roles in the users' lives -- a family group, for
instance, or one for a weekend running club.
Semi-Private Knowledge
The change solves what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called "the biggest
problem in social networking" -- the tension between sharing with
closer friends and having to also share those relatively intimate details with more distant relationships.
The revamped groups service is being headed up by Justin Shaffer, the
former CEO of Facebook-acquired Hot Potato. That service enabled
group-based social networking based on common interests or events.
"We really think this is going to change fundamentally how you use
Facebook today," he said.
The groups feature differs from the existing groups functionality in
Facebook in that users can add their own friends to new groups. For
instance, a mother could add her husband and children to a closed
family group, the add her friends from work to another group. Groups also include a dedicated email, allowing members
to communicate as if over a mailing list. It also includes group chat,
in which all members are able to simultaneously participate.
Addressing privacy concerns, Facebook made groups closed by default,
meaning their title and members are visible, but content is not, and
uninvited members will have to request to join. It's also possible to
create fully cloaked secret groups. Groups will also include a shared
document editing space for tasks such as grocery lists or
collaborative projects.
Group Confusion
Whether groups will truly prove to be a security improvement has yet to be
seen, according to Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, a frequent Facebook privacy critic.
"You have to wonder what Facebook will do with information about your
social connections," he told TechNewsWorld.
However, Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs and digital media
professor at the Columbia Journalism School, said he thinks Facebook
has turned the corner on privacy.
"If they live up to their own very simply self-described privacy
standards, Facebook will not have a privacy problem," he said.
Facebook may, however, encounter a confusion problem.
Not long after the changes were announced, users took to Twitter to
herald, decry and discuss the announcement. It wasn't long before
other users began questioning all the hoopla, saying Facebook had long
had groups. Sreenivasan himself found out about Facebook's changes
when people began emailing him with concerns about what might happen
to their existing groups (nothing, according to Facebook).
"In many ways, this is very good, but it can also be very confusing," he said.
Check Yourself
The other tools allow users to download all of their data and to
monitor and more easily adjust how applications and other sites linked
to their Facebook accounts use their data.
The download feature allows users to request a zipped folder
containing a browser-viewable file with all of their wall posts,
photos, videos and other details.
Product manager David Recordon said the file will be protected by
password and sometimes Captcha requests to prevent unauthorized
downloads.
The apps dashboard provides a detailed log showing when applications
called up Facebook's API and what information is shared. It also includes an
integrated way to adjust settings controlling how that data is shared.
The changes will help protect user privacy in more ways than one, said Product Manager Carl Sjogreen.
"Greater visibility into what data applications are using is great for
users, but it also has this positive impact on developers in that
they'll be much more judicious about the permissions and the data that
they use on users' behalf," he said.
Facebook has been the subject of intense privacy complaints in recent
years. Critics have attacked the company's attitude toward helping
users keep their data private, citing decisions to default many
privacy settings to full sharing and making it difficult for many
users to understand complicated privacy policy menus. However, Zuckerberg
said privacy and user control are at the heart of the new services.
"It's a core part of our belief that people own and should have
control over the information they give to Facebook," he said.
The new tools began trickling out to users on Wednesday. It's not
clear when all of Facebook's 500 million users would have access to
the changes.
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