Facebook Announces Groups, Download Your Information, Dashboard

Facebook has announced three new features: Groups, Download Your Information, and Dashboard.

Groups:
It's a simple way to stay up to date with small groups of your friends and to share things with only them in a private space. The default setting is Closed, which means only members see what's going on in a group. From this space, you can quickly post photos, make plans and keep up with ongoing conversations. You can also group chat with members who are online right now. You can even use each group as an email list to quickly share things when you're not on Facebook. The net effect is your whole experience is organized around spaces of the people you care most about.

Download Your Information:
An easy way to quickly download to your computer everything you've ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information. If you want a copy of the information you've put on Facebook for any reason, you can click a link and easily get a copy of all of it in a single download. To protect your information, this feature is only available after confirming your password and answering appropriate security questions. You'll find it under your account settings.


Dashboard:
In your Facebook privacy settings, you will have a single view of all the applications you've authorized and what data they use. You can also see in detail when they last accessed your data. You can change the settings for an application to make less information available to it, or you can even remove it completely.