Photo: Courtesy of Facebook.
All the privacy settings you've built up to protect your Facebook identity have a new enemy on the horizon: embedded posts. In an effort to keep up with its contemporaries, Facebook announced yesterday that the option for embedding posts will slowly be rolled out over the next couple of weeks.
At its core, Facebook is a private microblogging site, priding itself on its privacy settings. Twitter, on the other hand, is inherently a public social-media platform (unless you opt to protect your Tweets). The site's option to embed Tweets into articles (Sharknado roundup anyone?) keeps a conversation in motion — in addition to being a fantastic means of generating more users.
Facebook's newest update is not necessarily about growing numbers as much as it is about boosting Facebook's influence when it comes to global-trending topics. The site recently began incorporating hashtags, to bring a user's conversation outside of the carefully curated network of "friends," but these conversations still don't leave the Facebook hub. Embedding status updates and shares will help break down that barrier, but also risks the privacy we've come to respect (and sometimes chastise). We now have two choices before us: Bite our tongues and tag along with Facebook's strive for relevancy, or ditch it and risk a serious case of FOMO. (All Things D)