Facebook introduces new privacy controls for mobile users

Facebook continues to tweak privacy controls for users, and now they've added mobile access to your privacy settings. The new mobile privacy settings include a list of every application you use, sorted by the last time each app accessed your information. From this list, you can fine-tune the access level of each app individually.

Within each app's settings, you can decide whether or not to grant it access to your profile info, friends' info, Places check-ins and photos. This is a long-awaited addition to the existing privacy controls that rolled out over the summer, and allowed you to control everything but apps.

This update works on the Facebook mobile website, m.facebook.com, but the Facebook iPhone app still loads up the full website in a mini-browser when you want to adjust your settings.

Facebook Unveils New Profile Pages

On Sunday, Facebook announced big changes for Profile pages, hours before Mark Zuckerberg's '60 Minutes' interview. The biggest change is the emphasis on photos: from the summary at the top of the page to photos of your relationships, images dominate the new design. You'll also notice that Facebook has done away with the old tabbed interface that separated your wall, info, photos and events into different pages. These viewing options have largely been pushed into the left rail below your primary profile photo.

Instead of hiding most of your personal information behind the 'Info' tab, the new design features an introduction at the top of your profile page that summarizes your job, relationship status, hometown, birthday and more. Beneath your summary is a row of the most recently tagged photos of you. Because these are highlighted so prominently on your profile, you'll probably need to be even more vigilant than before in making sure bad party pics or embarrassing high school candids are removed. Fortunately, you can hide any of the photos in your new Profile summary by clicking the 'x' that appears when you hover over each one.

Your relationship status and significant other will be revealed directly beneath your profile photo. Facebook is also introducing the sure-to-be controversial Featured Friends section in the left rail. You can use friends lists to highlight (micromanage?) your family, best friends and other "friends who are important to you." The Friendship Pages that debuted in October are now integrated directly into the profile page; you'll find a Friendship module showing off shared photos and friends at the top right of profiles you visit with a link to explore the more detailed Friendship Page.

Facebook now visually displays most of your personal info (including music interests, college and employer) by using photos instead of text links. Your personal likes will become easily browsable grids of movie, book and album cover art. Additionally, your photo albums now have infinite scroll, so you'll be able to scroll or tap the space bar to move quickly through hundreds of photos.

Facebook updates profile page with 'snapshot' and LinkedIn-style features

Facebook has just begun rolling out an update to the Facebook profile page, its main focal point for finding more information, photos and commenting on the walls of your friends. Your profile now features a 'snapshot' of your life right at the top of the page, essentially summarizing key details with two lines of bullet points and a string of five photos. The bullet point descriptors are taken from your profile information and feature your current relationship status, your place of education, your home town, date of birth and current job -- in essence, all the information that Facebook thinks is required to define you in one quick glance. The string of photos are pulled from recently tagged photos, but you can click a little 'X' to hide an image from your profile page -- phew!

If you happen to have very few pieces of information in your profile, the snapshot can be a little lacking, but that's not the only thing Facebook has put some work into. The Education and Work section of your profile has also been beefed up, taking on a much more LinkedIn-style of job titles, recent projects, colleagues you worked with and so forth. You can add more of your work or education history as well, documenting your learned skills and featuring certain achievements. With employers using Facebook to vet potential job candidates, perhaps it could be helpful to get your skills up there to counteract the hideous drunken photos from your mate's stag party last year.

Of course it's not all work, work, work on Facebook -- the other information features of your profile also having been given a make over, with 'experiences' being the buzz word and pictures featuring heavily. Under 'Arts and Entertainment' you can choose to feature artists, books, TV programs and films that you particularly like in an album art-type display, with each item taking you to a fan page for that film, program, artist or book. Activities and Sports also got a major overhaul, becoming a much bigger part of your profile in a similar way to your work information. You can choose to feature certain activities you're interested in or sports you play, add a little description and tag people who you play with. Drag-and-drop organization has also been implemented, which means you can order your featured interests according to your preferences. Now you can show you're a die-hard supporter of your local third division football team.