After social networking giant Facebook’s membership hit 350 million people worldwide, founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on the site that changes, including the removal of regional networks, will be made to protect users’ privacy. Originally part of the changes that transformed Facebook from a college-exclusive networking site into an open-membership hub for all ages, some regional networks now have millions of members, which is not conducive to privacy control, Zuckerberg said in a letter posted on Facebook Dec. 1. Current regional networks generally allow their members to see each others’ pages and some content unless otherwise specified. Zuckerberg said removing regional networks would give users the ability to better control who sees each individual piece of content on their profiles. ‘The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone,’ he said in the letter. As the number of users on the site increases, the range of users has also expanded to increasingly include parents and potential employers, and Boston University professors and students said keeping an appropriate profile is becoming tricky. Public relations professor Stephen Quigley said he’s friends with his students on Facebook, but tells them to restrict his view of their profiles. ‘It would not be appropriate for me to show up at a student party on a Saturday night,’ he said. ‘Having complete access to student’s profile would be like showing up at that party.’ Quigley said he anticipates removing the regional networks will cause ‘backlash and more responsive niche networks’ from lesser-known competitors. ‘While these new sites will be more intimate, they will be much less powerful than Facebook, because they will inevitably have fewer users,’ he said. ‘Mark Zuckerberg and company are smart. They’ll imitate upstarts and figure out ways to continue to make a lot of money in the future.’ School of Hospitality Administration sophomore Lydia Warco said having such an expanded range of users is a good idea because it’s a social tool that helps to keep in touch with people in all areas of life, but she thinks it’s getting more complicated. ‘I remember when we got Facebook, when it was really just schools,’ College of Engineering freshman Kylie Pedersen said. ‘I really liked it because your entire school was on your network.’ Pedersen said she thinks the removal of regional networks will be a change for the better. ‘I think the privacy settings are changing for the good,’ she said. ‘The more you need them, the more they’re there.’ Others said they think the regional networks should stay. ‘If you’re searching for someone, it just helps to narrow it down,’ ENG freshman Happy Ghosh said. School of Management sophomore Leigh Pressman said she skimmed the letter and was dubious about the changes. ‘I feel like Facebook should just stop changing in general,’ she said.