The privacy setting changes were launched in beta July 1 to a beta group of 40,000 and will become available to all Facebook users over the next few weeks.

Previous to the launch, Facebook included a corresponding privacy setting every time it added a new feature. Apparently this became way too complicated, said Chris Kelly, Facebook chief privacy officer, in a company blog post. Subsequently, Facebook is streamlining its 40 privacy settings, spread out over six Web pages, into one, simplified privacy page.

The site is also upgrading its privacy settings with a Transition Tool, which allows users to organize their Facebook "friends" by groups and filter those members they want viewing their most private posts, images, music and videos they share online. The Transition Tool gives users who want to share information with a more intimate group the ability to choose specific Friend Lists, friends and contacts in school or work network, and friends of friends. For political rants and other information intended to be shared with a general audience, users can choose the "Everyone" setting.

The Transition Tool is also designed to respect privacy settings the user implemented prior to the changes and will be automatically rolled over once the change is complete.

The new privacy launch was rolled out a week after Facebook launched its beta Publisher Privacy Control, which allows users to decide who sees the written content they publish on a per-post basis.

"For example, you may want to make some posts available to everyone, while restricting others to your friends and family. You should be able to make that decision every time you share something on Facebook, and soon you'll be able to do this," Kelly said.

Privacy has been a point of contention in recent weeks for the social networking site. Coincidentally, revamped privacy settings also follow shortly on the heels of reported privacy issues in Bozeman, Mont., in which prospective city employees were required to submit their Facebook and other social networking site passwords on their job applications. The city revoked the password requirement following a sharp public backlash from the Facebook community and privacy rights advocates.

Whether Facebook can effectively defeat Twitter's rapid rise on the premise of simplicity and privacy remains to be seen.

First of all, Facebook is not Twitter. While Twitter's content is more streamlined, and therefore more simple, "tweets" are publicly available to everyone on the users' network once the user chooses them as a follower. Tweeters don't necessarily expect that the information they share will be obstructed from a certain group of viewers.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a two-way network that can classify its users into groups. Now users will have the ability to choose -- post-by-post, profile-by-profile in some cases -- who has access to what. While ostensibly more private, it is anything but simple.

Bloggers, however, contend that Facebook's new groups will likely add another layer of complexity to an already complex network that they will either misunderstand or ignore completely, without fully grasping the ramifications of sharing personal information online.

Kelly maintains that the revamped privacy settings don't entail changing the way Facebook shares information with advertisers. But critics maintain that Facebook depends on user click-throughs for its advertising revenue. In short -- more page views equals more dollars. If everyone clicks or defaults to the "Everyone" button, Facebook gets more money.

However, Facebook executives maintain that the changes are intended to make users feel more safe when sharing personal information online.

"We're committed to giving people even greater control over the information they share and the audiences with whom they share it," Kelly said.

Could Facebook be in danger of losing its 200,000 million-plus users to Twitter and other sites because of privacy settings? Not likely, but it never hurts to stay competitive.