Facebook announces changes to privacy settings, including "tag" approvals.

Facebook gives users easier privacy controls

Facebook will begin making changes Thursday to give users more control of how they share content, and some of the shifts mirror popular elements of Google's (GOOG) new social network, Google+.

The changes, announced Tuesday in a blog post by Facebook executive Chris Cox:

-- Users will be able to change the privacy settings of each post at the time they share them. Facebook will add a drop-down menu at the bottom of the box in which users enter a status update or other post, with options for "Public," "Friends" or "Custom." The options resemble the "Circles" feature in Google+, which allows users to easily group their friends into specific subsets and choose which subsets see content in a similar, by-the-post manner. Facebook users will also be able to change the privacy setting of an update after it has been posted, also a Google+ feature

"Tags," which link a person's profile to a photo or other user's post, can now be pre-approved by the tagged users. Facebook will provide an option for users to approve any tag in a photo or post before the content actually links to their profile. Users will also have the ability to approve any tags added to their photos and posts by others.

-- Users can now tag people with whom they are now Facebook friends, and can tag any posted content with a location, negating the need for Facebook's Places feature. Places will be phased out.

-- Privacy settings can now be accessed through drop-down menus directly next to the profile aspect affected. Previously, Facebook privacy settings could only be controlled on settings pages that some users had problems finding.

To sum up the changes, Cox said "Your profile should feel like your home on the Web -- you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don't want, and you should never wonder who sees what's there. The profile is getting some new tools that give you clearer, more consistent controls over how photos and posts get added to it, and who can see everything that lives there."

Asked by Mercury News staff writer Mike Swift about the similarities between Facebook's new features and Google+, a Facebook spokesperson said "We've been working on building these updates over the last few months and, as we said a few weeks ago, this is launch season and we're ready to get it out of the door."

In other Facebook news from Tuesday, a company executive said in an interview that the Palo Alto-based social network is looking to acquire about 20 companies this year. So far, they have bought 13 companies in 2011.