Palo Alto: The social networking site Facebook said on Tuesday that it was introducing new privacy controls to give users the ability to preserve social distinctions between friends, family and co-workers online.
The Silicon Valley company was founded in 2004 as a social site for students at Harvard University and spread quickly to other colleges and eventually into work places.
Its popularity stems from how the site conveniently allows users to share details of their lives with selected friends online.
While part of Facebook's appeal has been the greater degree of privacy controls it offers users, compared with other major social network sites, the site has also come under strong criticism in response to new features that many users felt exposed previously private information to wider view.
Starting on Wednesday, Facebook's more than 67 million members 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 controls take advantage of “friends lists,'' a feature the company introduced in December to help members organize their friends into groups.
These private lists let users send messages to selected friends or filter what personal details various groups can see.
Only 25 percent of existing users have bothered to take control of their privacy using Facebook's existing personal information settings, the company said in a statement.
Facebook chat
In addition, the company confirmed recent reports that it is working on a new instant messaging chat feature that runs inside Facebook, allowing users to hold spontaneous conversations with their friends on the site.
The feature, called Facebook Chat, will not require that users download any special software, and will be introduced in a matter of weeks, the company said.
Use of Facebook has exploded fivefold over the past year and a half.
Two-thirds of its users are now located outside the United States compared with about 10 percent 18 months ago, when most members were students and living in the United States.
