On Wednesday, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, introduced three new Facebook features starting with Groups, which he says will give members more control over who sees what when they post content.

Months back, Facebook introduced a feature called lists which was suppose to give you some additional control over who could see your posts, but today Facebook revealed that less than 5% of members actually use the feature.  It seems that this is due in part to the fact that lists is hard to get set up and use.  So now, Facebook is replacing lists with Groups, which is supposed to be easier to manage and should give you better control of which friends can see what you post and when.

Zuckerberg describes groups as “a simple way to stay up to date with small groups of your friends and to share things with only them in a private space” in his Facebook Blog post on Wednesday.  Groups gives you the ability to chat with other group members who are online when you are, share photos and conversation privately, and even contact all members of a group via email when you are not on Facebook.  Most of us have probably used group features of some kind before, perhaps through Yahoo Groups, LinkedIn, or various other means.  It sounds like Facebook Groups will be a similar experience to these.

Along with Groups, Zuckerberg introduced the ability to download all the information you’ve every put on Facebook through a single file download.  This will make it easy for you to see all of your past data, posts, photos, etc.  What a great way to check on past mistakes and most embarrassing online moments!

The third feature introduced today was a dashboard that will give members the ability to see how third party apps use our data on Facebook or throughout the web.  This seems like a pretty nice move for Facebook who hasn’t always been the best at protecting the privacy of its members.  While this isn’t necessarily a great protection, it does give its members the opportunity to feel more secure about how their info is being used and gives them the tools to discontinue that use if necessary.

This newest feature rollout does seem to specifically answer some of the big questions that members have been asking regarding privacy and user controls.  Don’t look now, but Facebook might have been listening to its members.  What a concept.

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