Facebook took another step towards making the world a more interconnected place by making a major modification to their default privacy settings last week.

Users are now able to make their status updates and shared content publicly visible to the world at large and search engines like Google.  This is part of a continual effort to open up user-generated content by default.  This is great for users who like being public and great for Facebook, but users with leanings towards privacy will have to actively manage their privacy settings.

Facebook’s Barry Schnitt, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy says that becoming less private and more public is “a change just like it was a change in 2006 when Facebook became more than just people from colleges.” And I agree. The company embarked upon an ambitious journey to change the way that we communicate and connect with one another. It was inevitable for the site to open up past colleges and universities in order to achieve this goal.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s Founder and CEO wrote about these changes two weeks ago in an open letter on their blog. And to lead the charge, he’s changed his personal privacy settings to allow the world to see his updates, while still keeping some things private. The key win for Facebook within this batch of changes is control. Users now have even more control on what happens with their data. A higher level of granularity when posting status updates, photos, and every other bit of information on their profile.

I (@zanders) personally love the options, and have created multiple friend lists, along with using those friend lists to customize my status updates. And as a personal communication tool, it’s second to none now. But I’m just a single consumer.

What these changes mean for Higher Ed

Inigral CEO Michael Staton has written on our blog before about Facebook intends to serve the needs of Higher Education through Facebook Platform.  Institutions will need to embrace the fact that content put directly into Facebook and shared via Facebook will develop a life of its own.  Anything they have greater expectations for will need to be done in private social networks or in Facebook Applications like Schools on Facebook.

Facebook Developer Guidelines

As we’ve written about before, Facebook is proactive about identifying applications and use cases that match up with their vision for how higher education plays a role in the Facebook ecosystem, as shown in the image below. This is important because it allows the the companies building the applications to take the time necessary to get to know each institution and what their particular needs are.

The Facebook Ecosystem as presented at F8, by Benjamin Ling

Conclusion

In conclusion, Facebook.com will continue to make strides to make the world more open and connected, including changes like the most recent ones that further open up user profiles. By the nature of that ambitious aim, they can’t afford to focus on Higher Ed specific concerns like FERPA and rights over intellectual content.  Higher Ed specific goals for the use of Facebook must be met by Facebook Developers focused on Higher Ed like Inigral. For a more in depth view on the most recent privacy changes, read their blog post here.