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About Facebook

Facebook is a social utility that helps people better understand the world around them. Facebook develops technologies that facilitate the spread of information through social networks allowing people to share information online the same way they do in the real world. Facebook is made up of many networks - individual schools, companies or regions - each of which are independent and closed off to non-affiliated users. To join Facebook, people can authenticate into a school or work network, or they can join a regional network. They can then create profiles to connect with friends, share interests, join groups, send messages, write notes and post photos.

Facebook launched in February 2004, and the website now has over 14 million registered users across over 40,000 regional, work, college and high school networks. According to comScore, Facebook is the seventh-most trafficked site on the web and is the number one photo-sharing site.

Facebook is a private company located in Palo Alto, California.

Latest from the Facebook Blog

http://blog.facebook.com

Pimp My Privacy

by Nico Vera, January 24

Facebook has always provided sophisticated privacy settings to allow people to share information, and control exactly who sees it—for example, "everyone in a network," "only friends," or even "no one". Now, a new design for the My Privacy page makes it even easier to use.

Beginning with the Privacy Overview page, you'll notice that the "Networks" section has been replaced with a "Profile" section. Also, next to each "Edit Settings" link, we have placed "sparklines"—small lines that serve as a visual representation of your privacy settings for a section or feature. The longer the line, the more open your settings.

The new Profile section and corresponding sparkline.

The new Profile privacy page has the same information as before, but it's more powerful because you can control the privacy settings for all your networks from this one page. Even users with no networks can now control certain features, such as who can see their Wall. Below, you can see different settings for three Profile Features and their corresponding easy-to-compare sparklines.

Individual settings for individual features

Other pages on Facebook also benefit from this new design, including Photos privacy, and Profile Contact settings.

It's easier to see what your privacy settings mean for photos.

We hope these changes make the My Privacy page even easier to use, so everyone can feel comfortable with the information they put up on Facebook. As always, send us your feedback here.

Nico, a Facebook engineer, is keeping it real on the privacy tip for everyone on Facebook. He has been inspired by Tufte's work and believes that "good design is clear thinking made visible."

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