In just the last week or so I have noticed a couple of things that have recently changed about Facebook. The first one you might not have noticed unless you happened to be checking your privacy settings. The other one is pretty obvious.

 

Privacy Settings Are Now Found Under “Settings”

A few days ago, I wanted to check something in my privacy settings. But when I went to the drop down menu under the cog wheel icon on my menu bar, the word “privacy” wasn’t where it always had been.

So, I went to Facebook’s Help Center and typed in “Where are the privacy settings?” Fortunately, the help center gets updated whenever changes are made on Facebook, so I found out that they have been moved to “Settings.”

I can see why Facebook would make this change for streamlining purposes. However, because so many people (especially older users) are concerned about their privacy on Facebook, I wish they had kept Privacy Settings as a separate option.

 

New Trending Feature: Are You Using It?

Likely you have noticed the Trending section that appears in the right hand column of your Home page, just above the ads. Facebook displays three of the topics that are trending at the moment, and you can click on “See More” to see seven additional topics.

Facebook describes Trending as:

“Trending shows the popular topics and hashtags that are being talked about on Facebook. You will see stories from people and from Facebook Pages who have shared them with you, or have shared them as Public.”

 This is actually a good time for a quick “lesson” on the privacy of posts. It is likely that most Facebook users choose to have their postings seen only by their Facebook friends and select their privacy settings to reflect that.

However, there are those who prefer to make all their posts available to anyone who finds them on Facebook. Those people will have selected “Public” instead of “Friends” in their privacy settings under “Who sees my stuff.”

Pros and Cons of the Trending Feature

The neat thing about this new feature is that you can get “breaking news” on topics you care about but might have missed when the original post came up in your news feed. For example, the other night I saw a trending topic about my University of Wisconsin basketball team losing to the University of Minnesota. A sad outcome, but at least I knew how the game came out.

The less than neat thing about this feature is that it is offers one more thing to distract us if we are trying to keep ourselves from spending too much time on Facebook. But then again, you can learn about some pretty fascinating stuff, like the fact that there is a water slide in Kansas City that is taller than Niagara Falls.

You can find more information on this topic at: https://www.facebook.com/topic/103131519727095?source=whfrt

 How About You?

How do you keep up with changes on Facebook? What do you think of the change in where you find the privacy settings? Are you using the new Trending feature? If so, what do you think about it?

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 50 and up, to become more comfortable using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.

She works with business owners, nonprofit organizations, retired people, consultants, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.