Facebook promises simpler privacy settings

SAN FRANCISCO: Social networking giant Facebook admitted yesterday that it had made mistakes in its privacy policies and promised to roll out new tools that would make it easier for its 400 million users to control their personal data, Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old billionaire founder of the second most popular site on the internet, made the admission in a column that appeared in the Washington Post Monday amid growing user anger sparked by a string of privacy glitches.

"The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information," wrote Zuckerberg.

"Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted."

Zuckerberg said that the company would introduce simpler privacy settings within weeks, as well as a way to block all third-party services.

Facebook has often come in for criticism of its privacy policy, whose default setting is to allow large amounts of personal data to be viewed and searched by the public.


Criticism grew following the introduction of new features recently that extended Facebook buttons across numerous internet sites and could have exposed users’ browsing habits to others.

"We just missed the mark. We have heard the feedback," he said. - Bernama

The Most Important Thing To Avoid On Facebook

You have to remember that while building a business on Facebook can reap great profits, it can also be taken away in the bat of an eye.

As long as your business is on a third-party platform, they hold the strings and any change in policy or even ownership of the site can drastically affect your business model.

For that reason, the most important thing to avoid on Facebook is keeping your entire business on Facebook.

You can build a wonderful contact list and start to reach the 5,000 limit only to have your account banned for some unknown reason.

Do you have that list of emails offline too? How many of those customers were you able to convert to subscribers on your own website ventures? It's not enough to just build the list and keep it in Facebook.

Always have an exit strategy, in case somebody new comes on the scene and threatens to pull the rug out from under you.

If you are using applications to help simplify collection of monies or to facilitate consulting services via telephone consulting, do you know what you will do if that shuts down tomorrow? Better to have a backup plan now than to be caught with no way to earn your keep as the systems are down.

There is no guarantee that any third party platform you use will be in business tomorrow and that's why you must learn to convert your Facebook contacts into your own customers who know where to reach you outside the Facebook platform.

Learning how to do business on social networking platforms is a new way of doing business. You can learn great techniques that can make you an effective marketer on any site by studying ways to increase your sales on Facebook.

Everything that you learn in Web 2.0 strategies can give your business the competitive edge it needs to not only make great strides in business, but to differentiate yourself from your competitors too.

While they are still trying to make that sale in the old ways, pouring money into television and radio advertising, making the hard pitch, you will be coasting your way into sales that are based on authenticity, trust, and familiarity.

You will eventually be closer to your customers, can listen to their needs better, and should be lean and mean in operating and advertising costs.

You will have positioned yourself to be a leader in the next generation of online businesses taking off right now.