You know privacy on social media has reached a tipping point when instructions for changing privacy settings make it into the newspaper…

Facebook has become the 800-pound gorilla in the social media jungle. It’s now the place to go to stalk … er, find and communicate with, your friends.

The service now boasts more than 400 million active users, and according to its Statistics page, each has an average of 130 friends.

That’s a lot of sharing of personal information, which is what Facebook, at its core, is all about.

And the key word there is personal. Chances are, much of the information you want to share on Facebook isn't necessarily what you want to share with just anyone. But recent features introduced by Facebook may do just that.

The social network is testing the ability to show information you place on Facebook at other locations. Called Instant Personalization, it’s only available on a few sites, but the idea is to be able to personalize your experience using Facebook data elsewhere on the Web.

I’ve been online myself for well over a decade, but, when it comes to Facebook’s privacy settings I have always been very leary. It’s not so much that they make the data I want to share easy to get to…It’s more that they make it so hard to not share the data I do not want to share. That’s the whole reason I am very careful about what applications I allow, what invitations I accept, and truth be told…I don’t play games at Facebook.

As a matter of fact, if they keep making it harder I’ll be moving to another network…But like everything else in the world…It’s up to you what you share. But before you decide…Go read the rest of the article at the Houston Chronicle…Silverman: Privacy on Facebook isn’t easy, by design | Computing | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.