This is the appealing/appalling prospect now available to users of the social networking behemoth following an overhaul of its privacy settings.
From now you will be able to make status updates public (just like Twitter) along with all aspects of your profile. In fact you can now become a 'fan' of someone on Facebook whether you know them or not (and vice versa). Sounding like Twitter's 'Followed' and 'Follower' system much?
Thankfully however most controversy should be avoided since these settings are not enabled by default and users will have to switch them on to make changes. It will also be trialled on a small group of testers initially before the options get rolled out across Facebook's 200m+ members. So all in all no harm done.
In related news Facebook is also about to launch a new version of its iPhone app which it currently describes as "95% done". It lists the following new features:
1.The "new" News Feed
2. Like
3. Events, including the ability to RSVP [Finally!]
4. Notes
5. Pages
6. Create new photo albums
7. Upload photos to any album
8. Zoom into photos
9. Easier photo tagging
10. Profile Pictures albums
11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications
12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen
13. Better Notifications (they link to the comments so you can reply)
14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page
15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call
Push notifications won't be on the menu until v3.1 later this summer. Still sounds worth having to me...
In slightly related news Twitter has expanded its API so that clients can pull down more tweets if you haven't logged in for a long time. In essence this means you'll have even more to catch up. Yay?
Links:
Facebook
FaceBook iPhone News
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