Facebook has just made it easier for its over 350 million users to limit and protect who sees their comments, videos, photographs and other personal information by introducing more options for privacy settings this past Wednesday.

While the move was well documented in a blog post from founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg earlier this month, what some may not have realized was the change will also give people the opportunity to expose information to a much broader Internet audience.

The change in policy may be attributed to the increased interest of search engine companies such as Microsoft and Google in incorporating user-generated content (UGC) from social media websites into their search results. As well, as competitor services such as Twitter grow in numbers, with all of its published information viewable to the public.

“We certainly want to respond to the requests of people to be able to share information in all sorts of different ways,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook vice president of Global Communications and Public Policy.

The new privacy features will offer people a simplified overview page of all their customizable privacy settings. The new settings will make it easier for people to limit certain messages to a subset of their contacts as well they will now have the ability to broadcast messages beyond the borders of Facebook so they are visible across the broader Web.

Microsoft announced plans to incorporate Facebook messages flagged for the general public into its search engine results this past October. Google recently announced its own plans to incorporate data, limited to the special public profile Facebook pages created by celebrities and companies, into its new real-time search product.