Social Networking, Facebook Privacy Settings | featured news

Facebook took steps to simplify its privacy settings, in its latest bid to give consumers more control and clarity over what personal information is shared.

Facebook has announced a major revamp of how users control their privacy on the site. Among the changes, items posted online will each have their own sharing settings determining who can see them. It is the latest in a long line of attempts by Facebook to streamline how members manage their personal information.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went in front of the world's media this morning and grudgingly announced roll backs on some of the biggest and most controversial changes to the site's privacy settings made since December. The default setting for most content published on Facebook has not changed. It remains public, unlike the private nature of the site when hundreds of millions of people signed up, but control over a few key settings are now being shifted back into the hands of users.

One day after Facebook's CEO admitted that the company had made mistakes with users' privacy, the social networking site confirmed it will roll out new, simplified privacy controls on Wednesday.

Facebook announced some changes on Wednesday that are intended to make the Internet more social. Essentially, Facebook is stretching out into the rest of the web. And when you see these Facebook-looking features popping up on other web sites, how do you know what to do with them?

Facebook is spreading its wings to the broader Web with new tools that will allow users to see personalized versions of websites they visit elsewhere.

In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site.

Facebook's new privacy controls remain a work in progress a full 24 hours after release and months after they were announced.

A large pop-up box will greet Facebook users logging on to the social-networking site on Thursday, asking them to modify their privacy settings.