This morning Facebook announced a new set of privacy settings that they hope will be sufficient enough to make them essentially permanent, as Mark Zuckerberg described during his presentation. For many users, the new settings means greater control over privacy. While there are always aspects of the privacy settings to criticize, we think this is a major step in the right direction. Below are 10 things you need to know about the new changes that were announced today.

You Can Opt Out Of Applications

Facebook has now introduced a button for users to opt out from the entire Facebook Platform. That means you can block all applications, games, etc. While developers will probably not be happy about this, this means users no longer have to deal with application requests, as well as spam on their wall from applications. That means the more that developers spam, the more likely users will opt-out of the Facebook Platform all together.

You Can Hide Your Friends List

One major upgrade is that users’ friends lists can now be made private. That means applications and other third-party developers will not be able to find out who your friends are. Additionally, all friends can be made private which means anybody who found your Facebook profile through Google can be prevented from finding out who your friends are. This is a major move by Facebook in terms of giving users more control.

You Can Hide Your Interests

Facebook’s interests were recently shifted to a system called “Connections”. That means those interests were essentially made public when the new community pages first rolled out in April can now be made private. This is a huge win for users who suddenly found out that a large percentage of their profile

Much Information Is Still Public By Default

When users register for the site, it appears that a lot of information will still be public by default. This is different than the more private nature of the site, which Facebook started as. However, all new users will be able to customize their privacy settings and make their information more private. Facebook believes that more users want to share more information about themselves, as society becomes more transparent, and as such their default settings reflect this.

Instant Personalization Is Still Opt-Out

One of the things that Facebook may be criticized about with the new privacy settings is that the company’s “Instant Personalization” program is still opt-out, something that we revealed would be the case on Monday. While the company has stated that opting out has now become much easier, we haven’t had a chance to interact with the new privacy settings yet. Once we do, we will be sure to provide an update.

You Can Hide Information From The Past

By shifting your information to “Friends Only” you can prevent previous status updates from being made public. This is a great feature. Many users have been confused about privacy settings over the past couple years, and by making the settings work for information that was posted in the past, and in the future, users should now be clear about what is public and what isn’t.

You Should Review Your Settings

Once the new privacy settings roll out, you should immediately check your settings. This is because your settings will be saved as they currently exist. So if you have information that was made public through Facebook’s last privacy change (via the transition tool), you can now go back and make content (including status updates) that were previously made public, private.

Privacy Now Only Takes One Click

The most significant change here is that Facebook has shifted the privacy settings to only require one-click. By selecting “Everyone”, “Friends of Friends”, “Friends Only”, or “Recommended”, users can have most of their settings configured quickly. If users decide that they want to get even more granular with their settings, each aspect of their privacy can still be configured, as was the case before.

There Is Now A Single Directories Settings Page

Your Facebook information shows up in a number of directories around the web. In order to control how that information was displayed, you previously needed to visit a number of pages. All of those settings pages have been boiled down into a new privacy directory page (pictured below). This will control how (and if) people from Google, and within Facebook search are able to access you.

Settings Will Be Rolled Out Over The Next Few Weeks

Over the next few weeks, users will see the new privacy settings rolled out to via www.facebook.com/privacy. As users get used to the settings, we will be posting more comprehensive guides that explain everything. Overall, the new settings should be much easier as they only require a single click rather than configuring 50 different things. For those users what granular control, it still exists, but the redesigned privacy settings were built for the masses and that means they should be much more simple.

Check back over the coming weeks to learn more about what these new settings mean for you and your privacy and safety.

Want to keep up to date on all Facebook security and privacy information as well as news and tips? Become a fan of AllFacebook now by liking our Facebook Page below!

Læs mere her

Last week we posted a list of 7 Better Ways to Wish Someone Happy Birthday on Facebook, and had a great response from readers. I thought I would compile the best responses from readers into a second list with more tips. Thanks to everyone that commented here and on Facebook.

Take Out a Facebook Ad

This was introduced by David Kerpen, who suggested “If you know all about your friend’s interests, job title, company, etc you can nanotarget him/her with a Facebook ad wishing him/her Happy Birthday all day long!”  This is a pretty interesting suggestion, and might be hilarious for a group of people that see the ad.  Check out Facebook Ads here.

Throw a Virtual Party

Louis suggested we throw the birthday person a virtual party using the Virtual Party app. The application is described as “Throw yourself or a friend a fun 5-minute virtual party for FREE – right here on Facebook. You and friends converge to play games and wish the celebrant well. A Virtual Party can be for a birthday, graduation, baby/bridal shower etc.”

Include a Song On Your Wall Post

Mia Chambers sent us a screenshot of her standard birthday greeting, which always includes a video by Paul McCartney. See the screenshot to the left, and you’ll have to do a bit of web browsing or ask Mia herself about how she is able to generate those hearts and musical notes.  Sweet!

Send Real Gifts

Send your friends a real gift over Facebook, which they can then pick up in store at a later date.  Try the RealGifts application and see if there isn’t a gift that meets your requirements.

Create a Facebook Birthday Event

People love to “attend” events, even if nothing is officially going down.  Set up a Facebook Event for the person on the day of their birthday and let the comments fly.  Post photos and interesting movies about the person and make it public or private, depending on the nature of the person.

Make a Birthday Quiz for the Person

Using the Quizzes application, create a quiz about the birthday person and send it to all your common friends.  Let people answer questions and determine who’s the person’s best friend on their birthday.  This one can be a lot of fun and will definitely make the person feel special.

Send an Email Through Facebook

This idea came from Rodolfo Salazar, and could be effective for someone that doesn’t already have Facebook. The email serves as an invite to the network and a birthday greeting.  All you have to do is enter the email address into the “to” box inside a Facebook message to shoot them a mail.  This can also work for a special friend who you want to say “happy birthday” to in as many ways as possible.

Læs mere her

You might be familiar with the concept of Six Degrees of Separation, which refers to how closely connected we are with other random human beings, but did you ever think to leverage this connectivity to find long-lost friends on Facebook? An online friend of mine mentioned the other day that he was trying to find an old crew of friends whose surnames he had never known, and to whom he had no current connections. Now that’s quite a challenge, but it’s not impossible. If you’re looking to find forgotten friends on Facebook, there are a few simple techniques discussed below, after a quick overview of Six Degrees of Separation.

What is Six Degrees of Separation?

The ideas behind Six Degrees of Separation (SDS) are alternately attributed to the writings and research of several people; however, a significant influence on the SDS concept is the ”small world experiment” of American social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram was studying (offline) social networks of Americans and the “average path lengths” between people — that is, how connected they were to each other. In a nutshell, he sent packages to several people at random in Omaha, Nebraska and asked them to forward their package to a stock broker in Boston, Mass. via someone else. They were not supposed to send their received package directly to the stockbroker, but rather to whomever they knew who was mostly likely in their mind to be able to continue redirecting a package. (Milgram also conducted other similar experiments, but actually with the intent of studying anti-social behavior.)

SDS suggests that any two humans are connected to each other by at most six steps or relationships. So if Person A and G know each other, they are one degree away from each other. If they don’t know each other, there are at most five other people in between A and G, forming a chain of six steps, or relationships. (E.g., A-B, B-C, C-D, D-E, E-F, F-G, where each letter represents a person, and each hyphen represents a connection between the two people specified.) The idea is that SDS applies for everyone in the world, no matter how remotely located they are or how far apart from each other, no matter how rich or poor, famous or unknown.

Other variations of SDS include Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon — which says that he has either worked with everyone in Hollywood or knows someone who knows someone who… knows someone who has — and the Erdos Number, which is a bit more complex and refers to a “collaborative distance” or professional lineage between mathematician Paul Erdos and other colleagues in the field. There’s even something known as the Erdos–Bacon number, which is an intersection of the two concepts. There are in fact scientists, actors and a few others who have a connection to both Kevin Bacon and Paul Erdos.

5 Tips for Finding Old Friends

It’s this idea of intersection — discussed in the last section — between two seemingly disparate social circles that could be a strong factor in helping find someone you once knew. It might be difficult to find that person if you don’t their last name — as in my colleague’s situation — but it is still possible. What’s more, when it comes to the online world and social media, it might be easier than you think. An analysis of 30 billion electronic conversations (instant messenger, email) amongst 240 million people by Microsoft [FTP link; PDF, 28 pgs] suggests that the concept of Six Degrees of Separation can be proven with hard data, and that in some virtual social circles, we’re even within as little as 3 degrees of connectedness online. (As an online writer since 2005, I’ve noticed the latter to be increasingly true for me, especially amongst other writers.)

Now that’s a fair bit of theory, above, though you don’t have to do anything too complex to find someone, aside from trying to make the right friend connections. The assumption here is that the person you’re seeking is actually on Facebook. The diagram below might help you to visualize how to expand your Facebook friends network while seeking that lost friend. At each stage, you are expanding your network by adding “friends” at the next degree of connectedness. So you start by “friend requesting” all the people that you know directly, especially anyone whom you think might know the lost friend, then add friends of a friend (FOAFs), then friends of FOAFs, etc. The tips are below the diagram.

Click image to see larger version

1. Common friends. Who else do you know who knows the person you’re trying to find? Are you friends with them on Facebook? If there’s more than one person in common in that social circle, make a list and seek them out on Facebook. Keep expanding the list by taking note of other people less connected than the core group (which you can use in tips #2 and 3, below).
2. Ask FOAFs. A FOAF is a “friend of a friend,” and are thus “2 degrees” away from you. I’ve reconnected with other people in the real world through FOAFs, and there’s no reason why this won’t work on Facebook. Make a list of the FOAFs of the person sought, if possible. If you don’t know any, try finding the friend of a FOAF (3 degrees). This list could be all you need, especially with Facebook continually adding new search features. For example, one new social search feature will display the names of people who are friends of friends that match your search string. So if you start typing, say, “Jo,” the dropdown list that appears will return a list of Facebook users with “jo” anywhere in their name, and who are either already your Facebook friend or a friend of a friend. Leverage this network in your search.
3. Intersection of social circles. Remember that kid in high school who always seemed to make friends amongst all the social cliques? Find people like that as the next step in your connection path. Reconnect with them on Facebook, get reacquainted, then ask them if they recall the person you’re trying to find. He or she may not know, but like the people in Stanley Milgram’s experiment, they might know someone who knows someone…
4. Interests. Facebook has many thousands of Group and Fan Pages. If you’ve written up a “personal interests” profile of the person you’re seeking, this may help you them via Page search. The new social search feature mentioned in tip #2 above gives an added bonus in the search results: the dropdown list also shows Fan and Group Pages that match your search text, whether you are a member, or a friend or a FOAF is a member. So if you can recall your lost friend’s favorite hobbies, that’s another possible lead for finding them. If you both went to the same learning institution, worked for the same employer, or had some other location-based commonality, scan relevant Groups and Fan Pages that way. I found a few old high school acquaintances by checking all the different Facebook Groups for my school (there were several, despite being a relatively small school). My find included people whose names I’d completely forgotten but that I could still recognize from their mostly unchanged faces.
5. Check other networks first. Sometimes people have nicknames that you know them by, but their Facebook profiles might have their real names. Or, you might know their real name but Facebook shows several other people with the same name, none of whom you recognize on first glance. I’ve sometimes found people on Facebook by first checking other social networks such as Twitter, or on search engines, or in blogs related to an interest they had. Sometimes those blogs, or image sharing sites like Flickr, have old photos that you might recognize. If you know that they definitely have some sort of online presence, you might find them elsewhere, then notice a clue that leads to their Facebook profile. (There might even be a big “Connect with me on Facebook” button.)

To wit, my now sister-in-law set up a special interest Group on Facebook in 2008, then set about trying to locate people in North America who shared the same cultural background as she (and I) did. She had a list of names to go on, but often the kids in our community only knew each other by nicknames. So she wasn’t always sure if she was contacting the right person. She applied some of the above techniques, starting with people she did know, and built up the Group to nearly 120 members, and reconnected to a few dozen more who are now her Facebook friends but not Group members. As a result, she’s also mostly responsible for many of the reconnections via Facebook in our shared cultural community. While many of us still don’t see each other more than once a year (around July 4th), and some of us haven’t seen each other for over 30 years, we are many of us reconnected at least on Facebook.

As an end result of all of my sister-in-law’s Facebook friending efforts, I also reconnected with her sister, after 12 years, and we ended up getting married. (Thanks, Facebook. And yes, geek that I am, my first proposal WAS over Facebook chat. She said, “No,” until I persisted. Let’s just say that some things you just cannot do justice to through social media, and have to do in real life.)

Læs mere her

Jonathan Levy is the founder of Lookbooks.com. He will be part of the core conversation “Extreme Profile: Makover Edition” at SXSW with the editor of this site, Nick O’Neill, and Leora Israel.

Want your friends, family, and potential lovers to be more attracted to you? Facebook is an amazing tool for making you shine. Perfecting your Facebook profile can be considered art form, and is often referred to as “online persona creation”. The art involves a masterful combination of images, writing and information. Here are five simple tips for creating a more attractive and interesting online persona through Facebook:

Tip 1: Know who you are and have a clear message

A profile is a collection of characteristics that people look at to gauge our personalities. Often times, people will get to know us better based on our status updates, photos and other media. Even though we’re all complex beings, people categorize us to make sense of the world.

Are you the party animal doing keg stands, an investment banker closing a deal or jetsetter back from his latest trip? You can’t be all of them and if you try people will be confused about your personality and who you are. And for those of you who don’t want to be defined by society or think you’re a free spirit, get over yourself; you are not the unique snowflake you were in first grade.

When posting media or status updates ask yourself: “Is this consistent with the image that I am trying to portray?”

For example: When my friend Frank was fundraising for startups, he removed several hundred photos of him at parties. Ultimately they sent an inconsistent image. Would you give $500,000 to someone who had 20 albums of him being drunk?

My friend Kirk removed hundreds of photos of him with women when he started dating his girlfriend so that people wouldn’t think he was a womanizer. It allowed his girlfriend’s friends and family to take him seriously.

Tip 2: Pick An Appropriate Profile Photo

Your best bet is to use a head shot; something clean. According to Jo Blackwell of one of the top hair salons in New York, Dopdop Salon, it is important to “use contrast in the photo … if you have light skin, you should use a dark shirt. If you have dark skin, you should use a light shirt.”

Most importantly, use your image as a way to express who you are. Throw some personality into it. Use photos of you playing a sport, painting or performing on a stage. Also feel free to be silly if that is the personality you are trying to portray.

Biggest Pet Peeves

People who have a couple’s photo
Yah I get it, you love each other, and need to spend every moment of the day together. Thank you, we all just threw up little. Unless you just got engaged/married and are making the announcement, keep it to yourself. This is your profile.

People Only
I don’t need a photo of your pet. All this photo tells me is that you are incapable of relating to people in a healthy way. Instead, you’re making up for it with your strange relationship with an animal.

No Group Shots
Group photos tell me you are too insecure to stand on your own. No one will know who you are in a group photo. To make matters worse, if you aren’t the best looking, people will spend more time trying to figure out who the hot/interesting/cool looking person is instead of learning about you.

Special note to guys who are balding:
Stop trying to pretend it isn’t happening. We know, you know… it is no secret. So get over it. It also isn’t a big deal. If you can embrace it, no one else will care. In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner reference a paper on online dating done by researchers at the University of Chicago and Duke University. The study found that balding men who shave their head and men with a full head of hair are contacted the same amount. While men who are trying to hide their balding are messaged significantly less. Translation: buy a fresh pack of razors and let’s see that pretty scalp of yours.

Tip 3: Don’t Say Something, Show It

If you choose to fill out the “About Me” section, here is the most important rule: You don’t need to tell us characteristics about who you are. If you’re funny, you’ll write funny posts and have funny photos. You won’t say “I’m really funny.”

Biggest Pet Peeves

People who say they live life to the fullest
No you don’t. I have met a lot of amazing people, I have traveled with them, interviewed them and I have learned something very important: it is exhausting to live life to the fullest. Most people really aren’t built for it. It is more important for most people to curl up on their couch after a long day then to go on some zany adventure. So be honest with yourself. Chances are, you probably sit in a cubical wondering how you ended up spending 8+ hours a day pretending that you are working.

Someone who lives life to the fullest has photos, status updates, and videos showing how wild their life is. If your profile is covered with updates of how you just got a cow on Farmville or you just found out that you are like Samantha in the “Sex In The City” quiz, you’re not living life to the fullest.

You are what you do. Things to consider when wanting to be one of the following:

• Funny – Post funny things (You tube videos, amusing photos, a comedy routine you did).
• Deep & Spiritual – Photos from your yoga retreats, quotes from obscure spiritual leader, and weird statements of living life with purpose. (Spoiler alert: What is the sound of one hand clapping? A: The sound of one hand clapping. Things are always what they are and never what they are not. Now I sound deep and spiritual. LOL)
• Athletic – Photos from your triathlon, your latest race scores, updates about going to the gym.
• Lame – Tell people you have a bunch of great characteristics and then have a boring profile.

Tip 4: Set The Right Privacy Settings

If you never post anything to your profile, don’t worry about this. If you have multiple social circles and like to limit what people know, adjust your privacy settings. Make lists with custom privacy settings for people who are in high risk categories (Work, family, ex-girlfriends and their friends, current girlfriends, etc…) and keep the lists up to date. If that is too much effort, put everyone on the highest privacy setting and create exceptions.

Tip 5: Block Applications And Delete Wall Posts

There is a lot of spam that will appear on your wall. People will post the dumbest media, updates and gifts from applications. Don’t be afraid to delete these posts or block those stupid applications. When someone comes to your page, do you really want them to see that the latest item on your wall was “Heather has bought you a shot”? Or maybe you’re tagged in a video from college that you never realized was recorded. You probably don’t want that kind of media associated to you. If it is on your page, it should provide value.

Conclusion

All in all, when it comes to sculpting your profile, make sure that you send a clear message of how you want people to see you. As social media becomes more woven into our daily interactions, people will relate to us more on an online level. It’s important to make sure you always ask yourself: “Is what I’m posting consistent with the image I’m trying to create?”

Læs mere her

In honor of national Data Privacy Day, we’ve decided to list some of the most important things that users should know about Facebook Privacy. We’ve covered the topic extensively over the past couple years (including our new Facebook privacy guide), but there’s never a bad time to remind people of how to protect themselves online. In this article you will learn some of the most useful ways to protect yourself on Facebook and some of our most important guides.

Facebook’s Granular Privacy Settings

Facebook uses a system called “granular privacy settings” to give Facebook users complete control of their information. The way that the system is supposed to work is that users can control the visibility of anything they publish on the site. While there is ongoing debate about certain information which is not completely private, there are plenty of settings users can use to limit the visibility of their content. As pictured to the right, the basis of Facebook privacy is five core settings that you will see throughout the site:

1. Everyone – Everyone literally means everyone. This content will be visible to everybody on the internet. While companies and organizations want their content to be completely public, a lot of users prefer to have their content restricted. By selecting everyone you will have no restrictions on your information or content.
2. Friends and Networks – This setting will only be visible if you are part of a university or professional organization. If you are not a member of a specific network, this will not be visible. By selecting this option, your information will be only be visible to your friends and members of the networks that you are part of. If you are not a member of a network, there’s no need to worry about this option.
3. Friends of Friends – I’m not sure why you would want to select this option, however some users want to restrict content to a partially restricted network. While not everybody will be able to see your information, anything to decide to apply this setting to will be visible to your friends and all of their friends.
4. Only Friends – This setting is pretty straight-forward. Any user that is your friend will be able to see the content you are selecting this for.
5. Custom – Want to manually select individual friends that can view your information? By using the custom option, you will be able to select individual friends that can and cannot see your information.

You can now go through the privacy settings area on Facebook and you will be able to apply these settings to any of your personal information.

Understanding Friend Lists

While we previously published a guide to Facebook friend lists, we thought it would be useful to remind users about friend lists. While only a fraction of users take advantage of friend lists, the feature is extremely useful when trying to separate your various social or affiliation groups. For example, you may have work contacts, family members, and close friends all connected to you on Facebook. As we previously wrote:

The purpose is to easily group your friends, set custom profile settings based on your connection, and to be able to more effectively browse the site.

There are two primary places to view your friend lists: the homepage and the friends page. By default, Facebook applies any networks you belong to as friend lists. They then allow you to create your own lists. In the image to the right, you can see a few of the friend lists I created for myself. The “American” list was automatically generated by Facebook and displays all of my friends who attended American University. I created a list “AllFacebook” to signify that I met the user through this blog. Members of that list are then limited to accessing specific contact information (I don’t want someone I met on my blog to know my home address).

I grew up in Arlington, Virginia. As such, I have a number of friends that I went to elementary, middle, and high school with. I have grouped these individuals into the “Arlington People” list. I have relatively unrestricted privacy settings for members of this list as I am personally close to the majority of them. If you want to take the time to configure your own friend lists, definitely check out our friend lists guide.

Protect The Content You Publish

Whether it’s the photos, videos, or status updates that you publish, you have the ability to control the visibility of all that content. While we go into extreme detail in our new Facebook privacy guide about protecting your content, it’s important to highlight the publisher privacy settings. Any content that you publish via the Facebook publisher (pictured above) has privacy settings applied to them using the granular settings highlighted earlier.

For many users this has become “Everyone” by default so it’s important to take note of this setting with every piece of content you publish. You can also configure the settings for photos and videos you are tagged in via the profile privacy settings page. We’ll avoid going into too much detail here as it has been explained for the most part but if you want more information about restricting the visibility of the content you publish, check out our new Facebook privacy guide or one of the articles listed below.

Make Your Contact Information Private

One of the most important things to protect is your contact information. Your phone numbers, email addresses, and even home addresses can be stored and used for malicious purposes. If you want to protect yourself on Facebook, limiting the visibility of your personal contact information is probably the single most important thing you need to do. There are two places to control your the visibility of your contact information: the contact privacy settings page and the info tab of your personal profile.

From the contact privacy page, you can customize the contact settings as much as you’d like. I would tend to restrict those individuals you don’t know well from viewing your contact information. Facebook has a default “Limited Profile” list (as pictured below), however you may have other custom friend lists you’d like to apply. I’ll let you determine who you’d like to limit your information to.

A best practice that I use is to not store your home address on Facebook. Also restrict those people you don’t know from viewing your email address and phone numbers. If you modify your privacy settings from the info tab of your personal profile, you will be able to select privacy settings for every contact item (pictured below). This gives you complete control of your information.

Our Most Important Facebook Privacy Articles

While there are many Facebook privacy settings that you can configure, we’ve highlighted the most important ones in this article. If you want to learn more about Facebook privacy, we suggest you check out some of the following articles we’ve written over the past year. The best way to protect yourself online is to get informed, so here are some of the best articles to learn about Facebook privacy:

• 10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
• Video Of Our New Facebook Privacy Guide
• How To Control The Visibility Of Facebook Wall Posts
• How To Stop Facebook From Publishing Recent Activity To The News Feed
• How To Avoid A Facebook Photo Tagging Disaster
• How To Manage Your Facebook Relationships With Friend Lists

Læs mere her