GIGAOM
LIZ GANNES
18 MARCH 08
Facebook debuted tools for item-by-item and friend-by-friend privacy settings at a media briefing at its Palo Alto headquarters on Tuesday. Perhaps more important than the granularity, the service will expand existing tools for users to lump friends into groups (”friend lists”) so they can include and exclude them from certain photo sets, applications, events, profile information, and other items on the site. The products will launch sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. The company also showed off some upcoming in-browser instant messaging features.
The new privacy tools are “just a personal management thing,” said Naomi Gleit, a Facebook product manager. “The people who are on my friend lists are not aware that they’re on my friend lists.”
