Facebook plans to release new features giving users more control over their privacy settings and messaging capabilities, according to its “What’s New” page. Recently, Facebook added Friend Lists, a way for users to organize their friends into groups and send messages to specific recipients, but offered no privacy settings. But Inside Facebook says users soon will be able to control visibility for their profiles, including photos and apps when the changes take place in Q1. Also in the works: the removal of the maximum capacity to which users can send messages. Currently, users can only mass message up to 1,000 group members at a time, prompting many - particularly marketers - to utilize other sites to more easily mass communicate. Allowing users to message an unlimited amount of people increases the viability of marketing.

In recent months, Facebook incited a protest from users, including MoveOn.org, by introducing Beacon, a program tracking users’ online purchases from the site’s partners and including them into their friends’ news feeds, and not allowing users the option of opting out completely. Facebook made some changes as a result. In an interview with Lesley Stahl to air on 60 Minutes Sunday night, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the problem with Beacon and admitted that the company “made a lot of mistakes building this feature.” He went on to defend the program, calling it “less commercial” than displaying ad banners on the site. Though he did sell a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) for $240 million last year, Zuckerberg has made it clear he has no immediate plans to go public. 

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