The problem with Facebook privacy is that there’s a lot going on, leaving Facebook stuck between a rock and a hard place. Every other year or so the trends change with the wind, making it cool or lame to openly share information with friends and colleagues and everyone else in between. The result makes Facebook one of the most open as well as one of the most closed-off social networks of our time.

Competition from the likes of Twitter doesn’t make things any easier. Twitter’s extremely open format has soared in popularity, putting the pressure on Facebook to find new ways in which to modify the newsfeed and regain some of its stolen market share. The pressure has also been put on Facebook to improve its search mechanisms, meaning this social network has a great deal of navigation when it comes to providing useful search results based on what information is available to which people and which applications.

There’s a push and pull that Facebook is dealing with on a continuous basis, facing the requests of privacy advocates as well as changing formats as our acceptance of openly-shared information. This is in part due to the interjection of business into social networking, which is always being leveraged in updated ways as people adopt new attitudes towards their social media experiences. The interests of individuals and businesses don’t always see eye-to-eye, so the underlying discourse can cause some confusion for social network owners as well as end users.

After touting its plans to simplify the privacy settings on Facebook, the social network is now looking to enhance them further after being investigated by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. So does Facebook now have to please two ends of the extreme at the same time?

In a sense, yes. But I think Facebook can handle it. The two ends of the extreme actually go hand in hand; Facebook can improve and enhance privacy settings as part of the same initiative. A primary goal for Facebook has been, and should continue to be a combination of adding privacy options to users while making it easier for users to manage these privacy settings. I expect that Facebook has long since had this in mind when working on privacy issues within its network, and this will continue to be at the forefront of most everything Facebook does moving forward.