Starting now, you will be able to publish status updates not just to your 'friends' on Facebook, but to EVERYONE -- regardless of whether or not they are in your network. That means that your status updates can be visible to not only those in your social network, but those who aren't, and maybe even more importantly, Google, Bing, and every other search engine indexing Facebook pages and profiles.
Here's how the setting looks, courtesy of AllFacebook:
This is definitely a first step towards opening up a platform that has built its success upon giving its users full control over only letting certain people in. Perhaps Facebook is realizing that being ubiquitous means opening up even further than the Facebook Connect platform has allowed it to. Or maybe they are just feeling the Twitter heat. Either way, Facebook just got a little more public.
When Facebook launched their new 'Pages' product, they made brand pages look, feel, and act more like profiles. Now, profiles are acting more like Pages. If this is a step towards going the 'full monty', is this something that users will embrace -- or shun? Either way, this is something to pay attention to. I'm sure Facebook will be paying very close attention to it.
We all live in public now, apparently.
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