Facebook Has A New Update: It's Time To Change Your Privacy Settings

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With it’s new update as announced on 22nd October 2015 by Tom Stocky, VP of Search for Facebook; Facebook’s Search Now Combs Through Public Posts, Conversations, and More. This brings it upto the competition with Twitter and even Google as real-time posts and updates made by users are indexed and searchable.

If you’re a Facebook user, it’s time to look into your privacy settings with the new update, just in case you haven’t already. “Today, we’re updating Facebook Search so that in addition to friends and family, you can find out what the world is saying about topics that matter to you,” as mentioned on Facebook blog.

In addition to friends and family, know what the world is saying about topics you search. Public posts made by individuals now searchable by world, in addition to your friend’s posts and posts by pages and groups.

It’s truly beneficial for seeing real time analysis of trending events and topics. It optimizes the feedback too as now we can voice out our opinions and increase chances of it to reach to a wider audience. One can have real time updates about an event as well. This seemingly minor update where we can ‘search’ for a wider range of public posts will definitely optimize one’s experience on Facebook.

From Now on, in the search box, Facebook will offer personalized suggestions you might be interested in. “As you type, we’ll highlight things that are happening right now so you can follow popular stories as they unfold,” Tom Stocky, Facebook’s VP of Search wrote.

Besides your friend’s post, your search engine can returns results across all the users of public Facebook posts which are relevant. “Search results are organized to help you cut through the noise and quickly understand what the world is saying about a topic in the moment,” Stocky added.

Facebook makes it easier to make trending news accessible in real time. With one tap, you can see public posts and all relevant trending posts about it. Facebook hopes to improve it over time with user feedback as it is seen as the first step.

The tool is optimized to make Facebook posts relevant and widely sharable by media outlets, from CNN to Reddit, when they are at the heart of an unfolding viral moment. Theoretically, in a way it is like following a story as it unfolds in the heat of the moment as it is done on Twitter.

You might ask, “What does this new Facebook update mean to me?”

Here is the critical part – any public status or update can now be searchable worldwide, in real time with roughly any effort on behalf of the user.
Martin Stoehr, a Facebook user updated his status regarding the same. A search was made by us using ‘Search FYI’ and we found his quote in real time, “Last Year, Facebook helpfully introduced a feature that made individual posts searchable, rather than just people and brands. At the time search was limited to friends. Now, it includes all public posts, including yours, making this an excellent time for a Facebook privacy refresher.”

However, As a Facebook user, If you do not want your status updates (past, present, or future) to be easily searched and view-able by anyone in the world, now would be an excellent time to update your privacy settings; Please make sure your posts do not have the tiny “globe” icon next to it so that they are not set to ‘Public’ There is a setting you can change in Facebook to ensure that every post you made publicly in the past is changed to ‘Friends Only’. No harm in rechecking your privacy settings if you haven’t already for your past posts.