Facebook has announced a number of new features today that are all aimed at their user’s privacy. A number of them look as though they have been “borrowed” from Google+. The first change is the introduction of inline profile controls. Until now Facebook users have had to make several clicks in order to change most privacy settings. With inline profile controls you will be able to choose who is able to see a variety of your data from your profile info to individual posts. So those Facebook users who always think to themselves “If only there was a way that I could post updates to my friends without my work colleagues seeing them” can now do so. On Google+ all your contacts are automatically arranged into groups, known as “circles”, whenever you post anything on Google+ you have the option to choose which of your circles can see the post or you can make it public so that anyone can see it.

The next change is the profile tag review. In the past if you were tagged in a photograph you had no control over it. You could detag yourself from it but only after the photo was online with yourself tagged. If you were away from your Facebook account for a couple of days then a picture that you did not want to be made public could well have been seen by all of your Facebook friends. Under the new system Facebook users will have to approve a photo that they have been tagged in before it will appear in that users profile.

There is also a content tag review that means that you can approve or reject posts that you have been tagged in.

There used to be a feature on Facebook that allowed you to see how your profile would look to another Facebook user. This was withdrawn after it emerged that not only could you see how your profile looked to a specific person but that, through a bug, you could also read their inbox. Once the bug was fixed the setting to use this feature was hidden away, now you will be able to see it in the top right of your page.

You will now be able to change who can see your posts after you have posted your content. This is also a new feature as previously you were able to choose who could see your content but once it was posted you could do nothing to edit those settings.

Anyone who is already on Google+ will realise that they have been using these same type of features on the Search Engine’s very own social network since it was launched six weeks ago. It would be easy to say that Facebook is just copying Google+ but in fairness there are many features on Google+ that originated on Facebook. What we are seeing at the moment is the evolution of social networking as new features are introduced. One thing that it does show is how seriously Facebook takes Google+ as a potential rival. Every time commentators have hailed some feature on Google+ as being something that is either better than Facebook or something that Facebook does not have then within a matter of days or weeks that same feature is available on Facebook. Think about how excited everybody was getting about video “Hangouts” on Google+, almost immediately Facebook retaliated with Skype integration to provide a video chat facility.

There is a long way to go in the war for dominance of the social sphere.