Facebook’s Publisher – aka, the “What’s on your mind?” box on your homepage, was recently overhauled to support smart links, video, photos and other options.
Today, however, Facebook is announcing even more updates to Publisher, which will let users control the privacy settings around each status update they post to Facebook. Beta testers, and eventually the rest of us, will now be able to specify whether they want to update the world or just a select group of friends.
The new Publisher will now have a lock icon in the lower right hand corner, where users can select to share updates with everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends, just friends, or a custom list. It’s important to note that the share with everyone option is essentially going to make your Facebook status updates public domain, and this has major implications for the upcoming release of Facebook Search.
So, why the changes to Publisher? According to Facebook’s blog post, “You may have some posts you want to share with a wide audience, such as whom you voted for or how great the weather is today. Other times you may have more personal updates like your new phone number or an invitation to join you at your favorite restaurant for dinner that are meant for only close or nearby friends.”
But we think the reality is that this is part of the groundwork being laid for the roll out of Facebook Search. By giving users the option to share content publicly, privately, or semi-privately, Facebook can ensure that there’s no unnecessary backlash from unwanted search results, and, even more importantly, subtly encourage more Facebook (
) users to share their content openly. The more users who share openly, the better their search product will be. And it’s going to need to be great if it is to compete with Twitter (
) search.
