RWW: “Facebook’s official privacy policy has long stated that you are in control of the information you chose to share. What does that mean, though? Until last week all users really only had two big choices about the visibility of their content: it was either public to everyone or visible to all their friends. Visibility to networks, like your school or city, was one of many complicating factors in a situation that confused most people. Saying that users have control over their information on Facebook has seemed like a stretch. It is very important to many Facebook users that at the very least, people not be given access to their information without approval.”

VB: “The big picture here is that Facebook wants people to feel secure knowing who they’re sharing with, so they’ll share as much information as possible. The more data that Facebook has about who is sharing what, the more it can target ads to those people as well as have more places to serve ads.”

RWW: “Making Facebook like Twitter doesn’t sound like the best idea in the world, but it’s just about the only credible explanation we can think of for the increasingly clear push towards more public sharing on the site. Privacy settings have been confusing and today’s move to simplify them is great. But Facebook is a small-group method of communication for the vast majority of its users and emphasizing list-specific messaging instead of ‘everyone’ would be a more honest way to give users more control over their privacy.”

NYT: “When asked if Facebook was trying to keep up with Twitter, Brandee Barker, Facebook’s director of communications, said the new settings were about encouraging more connections between people. ‘Sharing has always been at the core of our product,’ she said. ‘By recommending more open defaults, more people will be able to connect on the site.‘”

NYT: “For the moment, the features are only available to 40,000 Facebook members in the United States. Next week, the test pool will expand to 80,000. Once the service is out of beta, the various settings will be accessible from a drop-down menu next to the status update and photo upload boxes.”