As I write, Jay – Z is a trending topic on Twitter. Every few seconds a flurry of tweets arrive containing links and comments about the release of his new music video, Run This Town. A similar thing is happening on Facebook.
On Facebook the search term “Jay – Z” results in a long list of status updates sharing the artist’s YouTube video with their friends. It’s a fascinating realtime snapshot of what’s catching mainstream attention on the net.
There are a number of filters in the new search area. The two of most interest are Posts by Friends and Posts by Everyone. At the moment extended trading hours is the hot political issue here in Western Australia. By clicking on the Posts by Friends filter I’m quickly able to gauge the reaction of my friends to the governments decision not to extend trading hours. They’re not happy.
The Posts by Everyone filter displays status updates from users who have their status updates privacy setting as Everyone. There are a number of sub-filters that can be applied to a search that produce results that are more relevant.
Many Facebook users are unaware that their status updates are searchable. After all the privacy settings on Facebook are complex and, at times, difficult to understand. It’s therefore important that individuals take responsibility for creating privacy settings that reflect what they want the public to know.
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I hadn’t noticed that part of the new Search pane. This new addition certainly produces interesting results. Thanks for highlighting that. It just goes to show that with the increasing changes to Facebook, one needs to constantly review their privacy settings.
To digress, I really like the typographical portrait of Jay-Z btw 🙂
Very interesting post, makes you wonder about our privacy
There are so many levels to “privacy” and many people simply aren’t aware that they need to search through every hidden corner – including applications used.
Thanks for sharing this with us 🙂
wow, geez, thx pete, thats really full on! handy way to find out whats going on in brissie tho, or perth or wherever. necer noticed that button before. spose i better be off and change my privacy settings.
Just a couple more things, how do we go about checking whether these ‘privacy’ settings are working in the ways in which we expect? The only way I would be able to test some of the search settings is to set up a secondary account or is there a better way?
And with Facebook Lite, we now seem to be able to see a little more than before. Say when a friend is tagged in a photo by a non-mutual friend. Previously, it would be featured under ‘Highlights’ and if you really wanted, you could click to view the photos/comments. But now with FB Lite you are presented with the the tagged photos and the whole comment section. The FB Lite ‘Settings’ section hasn’t been set up yet but maybe you will be able to change this feature later on?? Who knows?