Research On Facebook and its Privacy Settings

Here I will look at research on Facebook's new layout and privacy settings as its something that has been on the news quite often.

New Facebook Layout (Timeline)

Facebook has now updated their user profile layout to what is known as a timeline. Unfortunately by updating profiles to timeline privacy settings have changed. I've noticed that there are less options to making specific areas of your profile private. Now users can upload a cover photo apart from their profile picture, this image cannot be set to private therefore any Facebook user will be able to see it even if your not friends with them. The timeline is purposely to be able to go back in time and see the users interaction within days, weeks, months and years ago. If this isn't limited in the privacy settings people can track what the user has posted and been tagged in the past. The previous Facebook layout was very simple; posts, images where displayed underneath each other therefore users would find them easily. The new timeline displays things next to each other, they also tend to group things which leads to users being confused as the most recent posts on their profiles is displayed all over the place. I personally have experienced this I sometimes find it hard to find posts displayed on my profile sometimes I'm not even notified that I have a post.


Below is a link on an article of someone who changed their Facebook privacy settings due to their job and invasion of privacy by people whom he knew professionally. In the professional world Facebook is used to judge how people behave therefore people who have their bosses or work companions need to be careful on what they post on their profiles as it can have an affect on their job opportunities. 

• http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/how-to-effectively-manage-your-facebook-privacy-settings-with-l/

Privacy Settings

Below are Facebook statistics gathered in 2010 and 2011:

• Facebook had 500,000,000 users who are logged onto their profile at any given time.
• Average Facebook user will have around 130 friends or more.
• 40% of 18-34 year old Facebook users will check their profiles in the morning mainly when they wake up.
• 28% of these users check their profiles before they get out of bed in the morning.
• 74% of Facebook users are 18-24 year olds.
• 30% of Facebook users are 35+ years old, this percentage is increasing. 
• More than 700 billion minutes are spent on Facebook per month.
• 20 million applications and games are installed daily.
• More than 200 million people use Facebook on their phone.
• 48% of young users use Facebook to find out news about anything.
• Within 20 minutes Facebook has around 1 million links shared, 2 million friend requests accepted or declined, around 3 million inboxes or posts are sent,1,484,000 event invites, 1,851,000 status updates, 1,323,000 tagged photos, 2,716,000 uploaded photos, 1,587,000 wall posts, 10,208,000 comments.
• In 2010 there were many changes in relationship statues: 43,869,800 changed to single, 3,025,791 changed to it's complicated, 36,774,801 changed to married, 28,460,516 changed to in a relationship and 5,974,574 changed to engaged. 

I've researched different websites on Facebook's privacy settings from the researched gathered I found several facts generated from studies carried out:

• 11% of Facebook users have regretted posting several content on their profiles or others (i.e. friends). 15% of males regret posting content compared to 8% of females.
• Around 48% men in 2011 seem to have public profiles whereas 67% women have private profiles. 
• Younger generations tend to keep their privacy settings up to date whereas older generations don't, this could also be due to not using Facebook often.

Resources

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/social-media-privacy-infographic_n_1367223.html
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14633427
• http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facebook-statistics-stats-facts-2011/