Technology News: Privacy: Facebook Hones Privacy Settings, Scraps Regional NetworksFacebook has a special approach to registered users - one account per user. On MySpace several years ago, users often had multiple profiles. When their outgrew a design or their parents had discovered their one profile, they would just build another using a new account they formed.
But Facebook did what other social networks hadn't been able to do. They became mainstream for professionals, businesses, charities and causes, groups, schools and teens. Grandparents, and high schoolers alike used the network to connect and share.
But what do you do when the different parts of your life collide on your social network> Weird Uncle Clyde shouldn't be seeing or sharing where you straight-laced boss can see. Your pastor, rabbi, mullah or priest shouldn't be seeing the outrageous party you hosted last weekend that kept you out of your house of worship nursing a hangover. Your new boss shouldn't be privy to what you shared about your old one and college recruiters have no business seeing you with six bottles of beer in your mouth at one time (neither, perhaps should your parents, the police or prospective mothers-in-law).
One profile? One account? It didn't really work. You could have a couple different levels of friends, but not different kinds of friends.
Now you can.
Friends from high school or college can be separated from the new friends you have made who wouldn't appreciate who or what you were 20 years ago, before you reinvented yourself. Your kids won't see how much fun you had at Club Med, and your mother won't know that you hosted a dinner and didn't invite her.
That's the main reason we needed this simpler format for choosing privacy profiles. One for every bucket of our lives.
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