Hurrah! Facebook has changed its Privacy settings! But what is all the fuss about? And should you actually bother? The good part is that it takes just one sitting to optimize and get the most out of the New Facebook. In the old settings, you just had choices of showing content to Friends, Friends of Friends, Networks and Everyone. The Network concept was downright silly. For example, if you are in the India network, there may be millions of people in the network. So much for privacy!

Now you can choose who sees which piece of content. Here’s how:

1. Lists: The most important thing you got to do is to make lists. For example, you could make the following lists: Family, Work, Friends, Schoolmates… This is a one-time job. Now a different and specific group of friends or list(s) can view every piece of content you post. When you add a new Friend, you can automatically add him or her to the relevant list.

2. Default Settings: Go to Privacy Settings–>Profile Information
Choose who gets to see what. To use the specific Lists you have created above, click “Customize” and choose from there. You can also choose a group of friends not mentioned in the Lists.
For example, the settings could be:
About me–>Everyone
Personal Info–>Friends of Friends
Family and Relationship–>Friends
Photos and Videos of Me–>Family
Posts by Me–>Everyone
Etc.
Remember: If you choose “Everyone”, that means it will eventually come on search engines.

3. While posting…: If you simply post a status message, then it will automatically choose the default settings. Otherwise, before posting, click the arrowhead next to the lock and choose your privacy settings for that particular status message!

4. Groups: Imagine you are having a controversial discussion in a group. Later when you use similar keywords, you’ll find it appearing on Google Search. What happened? Simple. The owner of the group would have set the settings as Content Open to Public. In such groups, whatever you write will become public. Check for that before posting liberally in any group.

5. Twitter type following: Now when you send a Friend request, all the person’s public content will start coming in your live feed. So you can follow that person like Twitter. But if you have a dozen friend requests from downright strangers and don’t “Ignore” them, then you have already started coming in their feed!

6. Photos: It’s better to use Only Friends for personal and private photos. The reason being Friends of Friends also runs into thousands of Facebookers, which is virtually public.

7. Links/Notes: You may want these to be public and show up in searches and hence click “Everyone”.

Final Tip: The moment you click on “Everyone” for anything, it is bound to land up on Google Search. If you want it, that’s fine. Otherwise, avoid it altogether.

Most people will find all this quite complicated and tedious. But if you implement it, it actually works!

© Sunil Rajguru