Facebook fires back at Google

By By Wenlei Ma | 24 August 2011
 

Facebook has introduced a raft of changes to its user functionality to ward off the increasing threat of Google+, in the pitched battle for social media dominance.

The changes will allow Facebook users to see who can view content on their profile page, and approve any images they are tagged in before it is visible to their friends. 

Vice president of product, Chris Cox, indicated in a post on the official Facebook blog that users will now be able to command who among their "friends" list can see their postings. It will allow users to create smaller groups of people from their main friends list.

The function is similar to Google+'s "Circles" feature, which allows a user to designate their contacts to different lists, or "Circles".

Since the launch of Google+, Facebook has hit back with several new changes to the site. A week after Google+ launched with group video calls, Facebook announced a partnership with Skype to introduce video calling on the site.

Facebook also introduced instant group mobile messaging earlier this month, a feature rolled out with Google+ at the end of June.

Cox wrote on the blog: "Today we're announcing a bunch of improvements that make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want. You have told us that 'who can see this?' could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward."

Last week, Facebook launched Check In Deals in Australia with launch advertisers Westfield, Commonwealth Bank, KFC and 7-Eleven.

Yesterday, AdNews reported Google+ branded pages have been delayed until the end of the year due to high demand from companies which wanted to join the beta testing stage originally planned for late September.

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