On Tuesday, Facebook said it was introducing new privacy controls to give users the ability to preserve social disctinctions between friends, family and co-workers online. While one of Facebook's appeal has been a greater degree of privacy controls for users compared to other social networking sites, it has been getting strong criticism in response to new features that many users felt exposed previously private information to wider view.
Starting on Wednesday, users will be able to create and manage lists of friends that are granted different levels of access to information on a member's profile. The group privacy control introduced in December helps members organize friends into groups, and lets private lists let users send messages to selected friends or filter what personal details various groups can see.
Aside from that, the company confirmed recent reports that it is working on a new instant messaging chat feature that runs inside Facebook. It will be called Facebook Chat, and will not require users to download any special software.
