Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in an open letter on December 2, 2009 that the site’s privacy settings will be updated to allow more granular control over who can see what on an individual’s profile.

Facebook’s population has swelled to well over 350 million users worldwide since its inception five years ago. When the site launched, it was aimed towards connecting college classmates with each other. Under that philosophy, the site focused its privacy model around groups known as “networks.” Each network connects you with other people within that same network. Networks were originally designed for schools and companies, but were later expanded to include generic regions such as the “New York, NY” network or the “China” network.

While the original model worked fine because they were smaller, more personal communities, the inclusion of regional networks allowed for less control over what information an individual shares on their profile. According to Zuckerberg’s letter, almost 50 percent of the sites users belong to a regional network.

The new privacy model calls for the removal of regional networks entirely and an easier, more finely tuned method of restrictions a user may set to restrict access to some or all parts of their profile.

The privacy settings will include three main groups of people that may see profile information, and fields to explicitly block individual users from seeing specified portions of a profile. The three main groups are “Friends”, “Friends of Friends”, and “Everyone”.

The updated settings will be available within the coming weeks. When the changes are implemented, users will be asked to review their settings via a message above their newsfeed.

More details are available on the Facebook blog located at the following link:

http://blog.facebook.com