Facebook's new public/private feature

Is Facebook becoming a cross between Twitter and a mini-blogosphere? Partly – if you make your status updates as long as blog posts. The social network site "is rolling out a new option for users who have made their profiles viewable by everyone," the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro reports. "A new lock icon in the Publisher, the "what's on your mind?" form, will allow users to choose a potential audience for each status update: everybody on or off Facebook; all of their friends and all of their networks; friends and their friends' friends; only friends; or a custom combination that includes some people and excludes others." Pegoraro goes on to correct a misconception some users have had about this development. Which leads to the question of when Facebook will simplify all these private-vs.-public options. The potential upside of being able to choose how public each status update is that it encourages users to think before they send each update. That would be good. Then again, the Post's headline is "Facebook Adding Overexposure Options."

Teens best adults on privacy

At Facebook, 60% of teens use privacy controls compared to 25-30% of adults, a sitepoint blog cites Facebook numbers as showing. Computer Associates offers some confirmation with a recent study finding that "79% of teens aged 13-17 who are members of a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook protect their profiles from the general Internet in some way (i.e., only allow friends or friends of friends to view their information), according to the blog. The study also found something not so surprising: that teens "are very likely" to post photos of themselves online. That may be why they're more careful about privacy. Good news!

Teacher's tough Facebook-privacy call

An elementary school teacher in Charlotte, N.C., faces the possibility of being fired for her comments about students in Facebook, the Charlotte Observer reports. Among the activities listed "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte." Her lawyer told the Observer that she thought the comment could only be seen by her Facebook friends. So either she didn't fully understand how to use the site's privacy features or a "friend" made her comments public. In any case, her story "is now part of a national debate that pits teachers' right to free expression against how communities expect them to behave," according to the Observer. Though this is more about judgment and discretion than technology, it does point to where technology does have impact: the invisible audiences of the social Web, as mentioned by social media research danah boyd in a 2006 interview. This story makes clear that it isn't just online kids who need to be thinking about who sees what they upload to the social Web.

European call for social-site privacy rules

The EU's Data Protection Authority has urged social-network sites to "warn users about the low level of protection given to their profiles," Agence France-Presse reports. At a two-day conference in Strasbourg, the regulatory body called for "a standard set of international rules" for privacy protection and user education. According to the AFP, it said that "users, especially minors, should be told about the risks they face by going online and given clear instructions on how to change their data protection settings." The AFP added that 70 countries stressed the need for a universal data-protection standard at the Strasbourg conference, which was organized by the Council of Europe.