You could be Kate Upton and you'd still experience the cold shiver of dread when you receive Facebook tagging notifications. "John Doe has tagged you in the album 'My 28th Birthday Bash!'" Even worse is when these tagged photos have appeared on your homepage before you had a chance to untag. However, it seems Facebook has finally realized that not all of us want to be tagged in every single photo of us that our friends have deemed fit to upload. The company this introduced a new feature that allows you to vet the photos friends are tagging you in. While it doesn't outright offer you the option of approving every tagged photo, it does give you the opportunity to approve the post that gets published to your profile informing your friends you've been tagged. From now on, friends will still be able to tag you, but you'll have the chance to approve it before it's visible to anyone on your profile.
"Before, photos you were tagged in would show up on your profile as soon as you were tagged," writes Facebook's Chris Cox. "One of the top requests we've heard is for the ability to approve these tags before they show up on your profile. Going forward, you can choose to use the new tool to approve or reject any photo or post you are tagged in before it's visible to anyone else on your profile."
In addition to this, you'll also have the option of approving tags other people try to add to your photos. In the past, anyone who could see your photos could add tags. However, now, you'll have to approve all third party tags prior to them appearing. The 'remove tag' feature is changing, too. From now on, when you click 'remove tag,' you'll have a list of options that ask you what you want to do: Remove the tag, message the person to ask them to remove the photo, or block the person completely.
These changes comes with yet another sizable update to Facebook's privacy settings. The social network has also brought the 'view profile as ... ' feature to the front page, right next to the edit profile button. Other new features include the ability to add locations to your status updates and a more user friendly way to determine who you're sharing with. Similar to Google+, Facebook will now show you who you're sharing with via a little drop-down next to the 'post' button. The more savvy Facebook users will recognize this feature as a rejigged version of the discreet padlock that appeared next to the 'post' button prior to this update. Facebook says you'll also be able to modify the visibility of a post after it's been published, too.
The changes are being rolled out today, but as always, it might take a while for them to reach you. You can read more about the new features on the Facebook Blog.
