I used to recommend Facebook to people worried about online privacy. I don’t do that anymore.

Well maybe I don't want you to know

Privacy just got too simplistic

I’m fully invested in social networks. I love knowing what my friends are doing – whether across timezones or across London, I feel like I’m still with my friends even if I’m not physically with them.

I’m also a lot more social in real life than I used to be, and although this maybe just my current stage of life, it wouldn’t surprise me if online connections did foster those in the real-world.

However, I have many friends and colleagues however who are cautious about putting parts of their lives online. No problem, I would say. Facebook is the best for that: its privacy settings are so granular. You can choose exactly what you do want to share, and what you don’t, and with whom.

At least, that’s what I used to say. Facebook has made a really significant privacy settings change, and unlike all the others up till now which have increased and made my privacy options more flexible, this one is a definite downgrade.

Facebook used to have four main type of ownership or tag:

• Your uploaded photos
• Your name tag in a post
• Your name tag in a photo
• Your name tag in a place

This meant that I could put default restrictions who saw which types of tag.

I don’t mind some people seeing my own pictures, but I may not want them seeing other people’s pictures of me. There are people who can tag me in posts, but I don’t let most people tag me in a place, or see where I am. With different types of tag, I could decide some blanket rules, then set and forget.

I’m notorious at the BBC’s College of Journalism for demonstrating my many levels of privacy. By mixing and matching the above combinations, I have seven (!) different Facebook privacy settings. (Claire Wardle and Sue Llewellyn always find this most amusing.)

As the joke goes, I’m not paranoid; they ARE out to get me!

But Facebook have wrecked my system. There are now only two main types of tag:

• Your uploaded photos
• Your name tag in a post, photo or place.

This means that I can’t separate different types of post anymore. If you can see my tag, you can see everywhere it appears. No more allowing people to see photos of me, but not where I am, for instance.

The result of this is that I’m not going to share quite as much, quite as freely anymore.  All because Facebook over-simplified.

I can still make granular changes to individual posts, but only ones I’ve written, only as I make them, and only on the website. Now that’s complicated.

Your thoughts? Please comment.

Meeting Amadou Mahtar Ba

Amadou Mahtar Ba & Nick Kotch, originally uploaded by R Freeman.

Amadou is the first of the visiting speakers this week. He’s head of the African Media Initiative. They aim to improve media freedom, strengthen professional journalism standards and increase investment in African media.

Some of his main speaking themes:

The media are critical in shaping Africa by promoting democratic governance and economic growth.

A background into the development of AllAfrica.com – a need for Africa to tell its own stories, particularly at a time when many newspapers did not have their own websites.

The rise of mobile phones as a content creation device and a content distribution tool.

The need for journalists to act as facilitators and moderators of debate and constantly ask who their audience is and how they are best reached.

First visit to Nairobi

I’m in Kenya for the first time!

I’m with a group of journalists being hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies.

I’m hoping to add some pictures to this a bit later once I’ve got my camera hooked up and the internet speeds have got a bit faster come 5pm.

Practising taking photos

Do you remember why we need the media?

In writing this I am satisfying a deep-rooted need within you

In the last few months I’ve been remembering what it’s like to be back at University.

I’ve recently written a digital journalism training syllabus for the Thomson Reuters Foundation and I’m currently helping  seasoned reporters extend their skills in social media at the BBC Academy’s College of Journalism, under the diligent eye of Claire Wardle, PhD (no less!)

Selfishly (because I’m being paid to help other people learn) I’m finding it tremendously enriching. I’m able to read and think much more deeply about where we’re all headed in this fact-rich, analysis-poor media landscape.

I was tracking down some of the academic research I was forced to do a few years ago. At the time, I hated all the theory, all I wanted to do was get out with the gear and meet people and talk to them and write a juicy story and get back and run with it.

Little has changed. Except now I care slightly more about why I’m doing it and what it all means.

So here’s a blast from my past, a theory of why people use television, by some chaps called McQuail, Blumner and Brown. They wrote this in the early 70s well before I was born, but I don’t see why it isn’t immediately applicable to today’s media.

Anyone producing content today should remind themselves why people need to consume their stuff and adapt to suit.

There are 4 ‘needs’ a person has:

Entertainment

Relaxation, escape, filling time, release of emotions.

Information

Learning, advice, understanding the world.

Personal identity

Finding role models, forming personal values, understanding yourself.

Relationships

Understanding and identifying with others, finding roles for ourselves, sharing common traits, and (perhaps sadly) substitution for real-life relationships.

Read that last one again. As true now, and more achievable now, than when the good gentlemen wrote it in 1972. Is it any wonder Facebook has become so popular.