Facebook is giving users the option of making all of their information publicly available. While billed as a response to user needs, it’s also being seen as a step towards more commercial use of the site.

Until now, user profiles have only been available to view in full by confirmed Facebook friends or, if you select the relevant option, other people in a network such as your city or workplace. That can cause problems when you aren’t sure if a profile belongs to somebody you know, for example an old school friend who has changed their appearance over the years or now has a married name. (Such situations are one of the few practical uses for the poke function.)

From this week, it’s now possible to alter your settings so that every Facebook user can access your full profile. Alternatively, you can customise settings for individual parts of your profile such as your photos, wall posts, status updates and so on. Users can make the changes by going to Settings in the menu at the top of the screen and then choosing Privacy settings.

There will still be some limits on the access available to profiles of users aged under 18, though Facebook hasn’t detailed exactly how this will work.

The IDG news service speculates the changes are partially driven by plans to promote its Pages system, under which commercial organisations, brands and celebrities can set up a profile-like page where they can attract ‘fans’ rather than ‘friends’.

It seems Facebook wants to boost this system by making Pages as similar as possible to standard profiles. However, as you’d expect, the organisations using Pages want everyone to be able to view their full details and messages without having to register as a fan first. Changing the profiles privacy options helps keep profiles and Pages consistent.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm under Social Media, Web2.0.

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