Facebook Changes AGAIN: What you need to know

Notes taken by: Theresa Payton, Fortalice, LLC.

Also featured on WBTV's Protecting Your Cyberturf with Kristen Miranda and Theresa Payton

800 million – that’s the number of users Facebook has and 500,000 of them visited in one day when new changes rolled out. We told you before that changes were coming. We even had a sneak preview over a month ago of what might change and how it would impact you. But the changes are live now and there is some confusion out there as to whether or not you are more or less in control of your privacy.

WE did give you a sneak preview of what was coming courtesy of WBTV’s cyber expert, Theresa Payton. According to a recent poll on Mashable.com when asked if Facebook was “hot”, 45.7% responded that Facebook was “lukewarm” vs. 30.2% saying it was “hot” and a whopping 24.09% said it was “not”. With all the changes rolled out now, not only do many Facebook users not like it, they can’t tell if they are better or worse off with their privacy.

WHAT CHANGED:

1. Privacy: You need to go in and check and tune all your privacy settings. Be aware of Facebook Apps! Previously, anytime an app needed to access and share your data, you got a notice and could opt out. Once you agree to share, the app has sharing for infinity until you manually turn it off.

2. Timeline: Instead of the profile page you were used to looking at. Now you get a stream of information about you. It encourages you to post your entire life online going back to the baby books!

3. Facebook Gestures: You are encouraged to share everything such as what you are eating or watching on the TV.

4. Ticker: Facebook has revamped your profile and ranking what you see. You do not see everything in chronological order anymore. A scrolling set of incoming posts will be on the right side of the screen.

5. Entertainment Destination: You can watch TV and Movies via Hulu, listen to music on Spotify, and read the news all while in Facebook and can post and tag your friends. It’s like a virtual entertainment destination where you can meetup with your friends regardless of what city all of you live in.

6. Facebook has more users and more engagement than ever. We got two interesting nuggets of information out of Zuckerberg (and the Zuckerberg-impersonating Andy Samberg): .

TIP: Theresa shared a little secret that if you don’t like the new interface, just switch your account settings to a language preference of English (UK), and for now –at least – you will see the old interface. Good luck with that!

Facebook reviews the new changes on their blog at: https://blog.facebook.com/