One of the most popular features of the facebook is your status box – aka, the “what’s on your mind?” box on your homepage, this box lets you share almost everything, links, videos, photos and much more….

Yesterday Facebook announced a new enhanced functionality with this status, which will let users control the privacy settings around each status updates they post to Facebook. Now everyone will be able to specify whether they want to update the world or just a select group of friends from status drop down.

This new status publisher will have a lock icon in the lower right hand corner, where users can select to share updates with everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends, just friend or anyone from your custom created list.  It’s important to note that the share with everyone option is essentially going to make your Facebook status updates public domain, and this has major implications for the upcoming facebook search.

So, why facebook has added this feature? According to Facebook’s blog, “You may have some posts you want to share with a wide audience, such as whom you voted for or how great the weather is today. Other times you may have more personal updates like your new phone number or an invitation to join you at your favorite restaurant for dinner that is meant for only close or nearby friends.”

But this new added feature may also happen to be a groundwork being done for upcoming Facebook Search. By giving users this option to share content publicly, privately, Facebook now can easily distinguish between unwanted appearances of search results. This will help some Facebook users looking to use their status for advertising as well Facebook themselves to build a better Search Product. Also as Facebook are looking to compete Twitter Search so it should be a part of that strategy too.

Related Topics: Learn Facebook Privacy Settings