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The new privacy features will allow users to decide how much of their profile can be viewed by their friends, letting them hide individual items such as photo albums and contact details from specific people.

The company is also introducing a "friends of friends" feature which if selected will allow the friends of your contacts to view sections of your profile without needing to be added as a

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friend.

As with the other features the amount of information displayed will be scalable, and need to be activated by the user.

The new features will be accessible through a new privacy interface intended to make it clear what is being altered and the effects it will have. Users will also be able to set the level of friendship when they first accept a friend.

Privacy has become a big issue for Facebook following the uproar that accompanied the launch of its Beacon advertising platform, which was revealed to be tracking users browsing habits.

"With Beacon we just screwed it up," admitted Matt Cohler, vice president of strategy and business operations at Facebook at the launch of the new tools. "It was just poor execution on our part."

Facebook is also rolling out a new instant messaging service.