Facebook unveils new user-friendly features

Palo Alto: Facebook on Wednesday unveiled tools that give users freer access to the data they've sent the website and make it easier for them to interact with smaller circles of friends, features that analysts say could increase sharing and time spent on what is already the world's largest social networking service.

Facebook will also now allow its more than 500 million users to more closely monitor and control what personal data third-party applications access via a dashboard.

Appeasement

The move is likely to appease some concerns of lawmakers and privacy watchdogs who have complained that Facebook does not adequately protect the privacy of its users.

The three new features, the result of two months of intense work at the company, started rolling out to users on Wednesday. Last week, Facebook launched new photo features including high-definition images and better tagging.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes at a news conference at his company's Palo Alto headquarters, his first public appearance since last Friday's debut of The Social Network.

Rather than blasting information to all of their friends, Facebook users can now put their friends in different groups and send messages and chat with people in those groups.

"What we've created here out of the box blows everything else away," Zuckerberg said.

"We think that's what people are going to want to use."

Zuckerberg declined to discuss the movie that explores the controversial founding of the company. He had previously called the movie "fiction."