Facebook’s Timeline Privacy Settings have been a tricky thing and it might become a bit harder with the new Open Graph Apps. The latest version of Facebook’s Open Graph was announced yesterday with a dizzying 60 partners at launch time. Be prepared for your Facebook feed to display a torrent of information about what your friends are doing, listening to, reading, and where they’re going.

Facebook Timeline Privacy Settings and Managing Open Graph App Posts

I recently wrote about how the new Frictionless Sharing feature of Facebook’s latest Open Graph changes will allow 3rd party apps to post for you. In short this change will destroy the value of sharing on Facebook. Just prior to the f8 announcement many people began seeing the new Facebook Timeline appear. Sadly, in typical Facebook fashion, many of the privacy settings aren’t opt-in. They’re on by default. I recommend you learn how to take control of your Facebook Timeline Privacy settings, check my previous article on how to do that.

With the new Open Graph apps that have just launched, and the implementation of Frictionless Sharing, if you’re not careful you’re about to start spamming your Timeline and you’re friends will see all the actions your taking on the web appear in the Ticker. If Facebook’s algorithms thing it’s interesting enough they’ll start displaying in the News Feed. If you don’t configure your Timeline Privacy Settings for these apps they’ll start popping up all over.

Timeline Privacy Settings for Apps – Set to Only Me

Anytime you signup and start using one of these apps you’re going to be given a choice of how sharing takes place. By default it’s going to want you to share it with everyone, but if you remember Farmville being spammed all over then you certainly don’t want to do that. You can choose public, friends, all the normal Timeline Privacy Settings choices. Of course if you think your friends are interested in the app and all the information it’s about to spew out at them you can set it to public, or friends, or whatever. Personally, I say go the non-jerk route and set it to Only Me.

Change Timeline Privacy Settings for apps you’ve already installed

If you’ve already installed an app but want to change the Timeline Privacy Settings for it so that it doesn’t send information to your friends Ticker or News Feed simply click the drop down arrow next to your name and select ‘Account Settings’. On that page select “Apps”. From here you can adjust the settings for any Apps you want to change by clicking ‘Edit’. Each app will have a setting titled ‘Post to Facebook as me’, simply click the Remove button.

You’ll still see your activity in your Timeline, but you won’t be spamming your friends with what you’re doing.