Facebook is launching a new set of privacy controls that allow users to set more specific privacy controls for different friends groups.

For example, if you want colleagues from school or work to see something different than your best friends, you can filter the content that each group sees to suit the level of privacy you desire.

Facebook’s massive growth is said to be the impetus behind the changes. Now with 67 million users, with two-thirds from overseas, the demographic changes in the membership have made it necessary to tinker with the privacy settings. Allowing users to adjust privacy settings in friends lists, which was introduced in December, is a welcome change to a feature in Facebook that was pretty much useless.

There are seven filters users can utilize: all of Facebook, friends of friends, all friends, some friends, only me, and certain networks. You also have the ability to blacklist people if you so desire.

Also, more details about Facebook chat emerged today. The feature will be coming out in the next few weeks, but will not initially be Jabber compliant and will also not have an API for third parties to fiddle around with. There’s nothing additional to download, and you can chat with as many people as you want at once. IM’s sent to users not online will receive them in their inbox.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 1:13 pmand is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.