Facebook fires up IM, ratchets up privacy

Social network Facebook will roll out more extensive privacy controls today, as well as an instant-messaging service soon after, representatives from the company announced during a press briefing at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

Most notable about the new privacy controls is the fact that Facebook members will now be able to choose how much of their profiles are visible to those on their friends list.

Naomi Gleit, Facebook's product manager for privacy and internationalisation, previewed the updated options, which include a new "Friend of Friends" option based on social proximity -- not unlike LinkedIn profiles, in which profile information is visible to second- and third-degree contacts rather than the site's members as a whole. Facebook members will also be able to include or exclude certain friends from having access to information.

In December, Facebook added the ability to create custom groups of friends, but aside from sending out group messages, there's not much that can currently be done with them. With this week's update, Facebook will integrate this function with its privacy controls. For example, a user could hide or show private information, such as e-mail address and phone numbers, from friends or groups using the classifications "Friend of Friends," "All Friends," "Some Friends," or "Only Me." This means that individuals on a friends list can have specific privacy settings, Gleit said. Whenever a Facebook member sends or confirms a friend request, he or she can assign privacy settings.

But that's not all. As was rumoured, Facebook will be launching an instant-messaging service, called Facebook Chat, which should be out in two weeks. Product manager Peter Deng gave a sneak peek of the service.

"When you log in to the site there is a Chat (user interface) at the bottom of the browser...It's unobtrusive and there when you need it," Deng said. No download will be required for Chat, which integrates with a user's Facebook friends list, and it works with all browsers. Members can hold multiple conversations, log on and off easily, keep the conversation going as they navigate through different pages on Facebook, and pop the chat up into a new window.

"We want Facebook to be part of your experience all over the Web," Cohler said. "Our business is not to make Facebook an island."

There's no limit to the number of chats a member can hold at a time, but they're all one-on-one (no group chats). There's also no "away message" function, just "idle" notifications if a member is logged in but has been away from the keyboard.

Additionally, Chat is restricted to Facebook alone, but the company is looking at Jabber support, which would mean that it could access external instant-messaging services much the way Google Talk does.