it’s privacy day at facebook (via mashable)

I posted the message from facebook ceo zuckerberg last week, and today mashable reports that the promised “pushed” privacy efforts are underway. that is to say, rather than waiting for users to go set their own privacy levels, the site is basically putting the options in front of users, offering recommendations, etc. Please talk about your experience in the comments!

We’ve known that a major privacy overhaul has been in the works for some time at Facebook, and last week a letter from founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg let everyone know that changes were imminent.

Today, the company plans to start asking all 350 million of its users to review and update their settings as they roll out the new simplified privacy interface.

While Facebook’s spinning the changes largely as being about making things easier for users (which is true; the current privacy settings are enormously complex if you care to dive in), it’s also all about encouraging them to share more stuff publicly by letting them choose an “everyone” option each time they post something.

That will be key for Facebook becoming as valuable as Twitter in the realm of real-time search, where both are now integrated in Google. Although it has many times more users than Twitter, to date, most Facebook data remains private and, hence, inaccessible to search engines. We’ll see how that starts to change after today.

See Also: Facebook’s New Privacy Features – A Complete Guide