Andrew Nimick - Technology consultant Andrew is an independent technology consultant whose focus is what technology can do for business and finding the best tools for the job.

How private are you? is a question every user of Facebook should be asking since last week's announcements at Facebook's conference, F8. A whole lot of changes got announced there and I won't go into the details here, but most of what is happening is only happening because of the sheer size of Facebook.

There are now 400 million accounts on Facebook. Or 100 times more people than live in New Zealand!
This has allowed Facebook to create a whole new use of the web, one which is truly social. But at a price.

Google has ruled the roost for many years because in huge library we need a system to help us find what we are looking for - once we have an idea what we are looking for. But in the Facebook library our friends tell us what to look for and where it is - social recommendation, not search. No more pilling through great lists of results, just finding things we did not even know we were looking for.

Facebook is reaching out across the web and is set to become the web for many people. This could be very good for clever sites and media outlets like www.sunlive.co.nz as happy readers recommend stories and articles for their peers to read.

I mentioned a price: privacy. Facebook is about friends and family and you can set who can see what. Well that does not help create a big social web. To create this you need to "encourage" sharing and visibility.
So if you are a Facebook user it is time to once again think about your privacy settings and just how happy are you that applications you use are sharing your data? As ever the rule we should be following and teaching our children: be careful what you show and say on the web, you never know who is going to be looking!