Loyalty Truth

While I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t post anything online that you wouldn’t want everyone to see, many might be happy to know that Facebook’s privacy capabilities are getting stronger. This week, Facebook announced a new feature called Groups, which will allow users to divide their network into smaller sub-networks, like friends, relatives, classmates and coworkers.

With Groups, users can selectively share their information, instant message and edit online documents with the people in a chosen group. Now “Work Stefanie” and “Play Stefanie” don’t have to be the same person.

Yes, this does sound familiar. Facebook already has something called Friend Lists which let you set up subgroups in your network, but compared to Groups, Friend Lists is much more manual – and only 5 percent of members regularly use it.

If you wanted to create a group of old college friends, you had to weed through your friends list and manually click on each person to add them to the group. With Groups, you can set up a ‘College’ group and only add a few people. The people you added can then add other people to the group, and before you know it, your whole group is set up. And if you are tagged into a group you don’t want to be in, all you have to do is leave.

Stefanie Stricklin is a Public Relations Manager at JZMcBride and Associates.

Editor’s Note: Does this seem like a clever or clumsy way for Facebook to address their ongoing privacy issues?