Facebook has hit the 350 million milestone, months after exceeding the 300 million user base earlier than expected.  With such rapid growth, Facebook could see 375 million users by the end of the year, and that is officially less than a month away.  An open letter from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicates some upcoming changes to Facebook privacy settings as a result of the bloated user base now residing on Facebook.

The upcoming changes announced by Facebook revolve mainly around the removal of regional groups.  As Facebook continues to grow, its ability to provide reasonable default privacy settings for individual users becomes more and more of a challenge.  This is because regional networks, which you can join upon registering for a Facebook account or at any other time, are extremely broad and require no email address verifications.

Since opening up its network to anyone, Facebook has been caught in a whirlwind of growth and activity, struggling to provide the level of privacy it once offered to its exclusive members.  Facebook’s current strategy in dealing with its scaling issues is to get rid of the large networks currently on its site and force all of its users to make changes to their profiles.  This will ultimately rgroup the Facebook user base into smaller groups, which can retain their potential for privacy longer and more efficiently.  For the time being.

The real issue here is how Facebook can deal with the ongoing growth. 

The way in which Facebook will be able to prove itself is to successfully manage the user base it has right now.  As Facbook offers a number of custom privacy settings for each user, the very act of informing users of all their options is a major undertaking for a network as large as Facebook’s.

What this means is that Facebook has to instill some sort of order for the user’s well being. The network does so by creating a series of default privacy settings, which generally meet the expectations of today’s average social network user.  But how long can Facebook maintain this particular strategy?

The other side of the coin is the ongoing changes Facebook is making to its news feed.  In creating a more open and accessible form of data streaming through Facebook users’ news feeds, individual’s privacy settings become even more of a concern.  In theory the democratic solution of providing these individuals with tailored privacy settings should solve the problem.  But again, making users aware of these options becomes an obstacle to its own solution.

With a concerted effort to make it easier for individuals to better control their data and the sharing options around their data, Facebook still has to deal with its developer community.  Balancing its platform for optimal use by developers as well as end users is another thing to consider when changing the way in which it organizes users through its networks.  Shifting the relationships between people on a direct or indirect level affects the way in which content can in fact be spread throughout a Facebook user’s social graph.

I think the shrinking of regional groups will be a good move for Facebook.  As its own platform becomes a cross street of social traffic being shared all over the web, Facebook at least recognizes its ability to responsibly manage the increasing traffic.  Recognizing the long-term effect of openly shared information will allow Facebook to retain its reputation as a network that protects the privacy of its members.