This is the Facebook Step We Expected: Default Public

This is a big deal. Facebook is taking the final step to become more like Twitter. Thanks to RWW for pointing it out. I've been traveling and had not had a chance to read the new privacy settings, which state:

...we'll be recommending that you make available to everyone a limited set of information that helps people find and connect with you, information like "About Me" and where you work or go to school.... This information is name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages....

The blog post explaining the changes amounts to a massive act of "burying the lead", to use a journalistic phrase. The lead is "the core of the story." To me, the fact that your status updates and other info will now be public is a pretty big story. But Facebook leads with this:
Today, we're launching new tools to give you even greater control over the information you share.

This is true, and having a more instrumented cockpit for privacy is really cool (and a big deal on a site with 350mm folks). But nowhere in the post is the status message shift mentioned. RWW found it in the video explaining the changes in more detail:

According to the video explaining the changes, the new default for status messages is "everyone." That's a huge change. Of course it's not hard for people to keep their existing privacy settings, but confusion around what those settings are is hardly resolved by the phrase "old settings" and a tool-tip phrase appearing when you hover over that option.

A substantial backlash has already begun in comments on the Facebook blog post about the announcement. Previous moves by the company, like the introduction of the news feed, have seen user resistance as well - but this move cuts against the fundamental proposition of Facebook: that your status updates are only visible to those you opt-in to exposing them to. You'll now have to opt-out of being public and opt-in to communicating only with people you've given permission to see your content.

Clearly, this change was not made lightly. And clearly, this is a move that pushes Facebook more toward embracing and extending a Twitter like model in the future.

What's next? Well, if the changes stand, expect a hell of a lot of action in the third party Facebook developer world....

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