Facebook has moved to simplify its privacy settings following waves of complaints from some of its 400 million-odd users.

The new settings were outlined by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a conference call to journalists on Wednesday.

Branding the new intuitive system under a "one simple control" moniker, Facebook says it will allow people to have greater control over how they share information on the social networking site in the future, while also applying the new settings retroactively to their pages and applications. Users can also now easily turn off instant personalisation completely.

"First, we've built one simple control to set who can see the content you post. In a couple of clicks, you can set the content you've posted to be open to everyone, friends of your friends or just your friends", said Zuckerberg in a blog post on Facebook.

Rolling out over the next couple of weeks users' privacy settings are expected to be reset to a new "recommended" setting that will automatically share users' posts, status updates and photos with everyone on the Web.

Also shared by default will be a user's bio, favourite quotes and friends lists. If that wasn't enough users will also automatically be included in the global search so people can still find them.

However users will now be able to easily change settings and set what information is shown to friends, friends of friends, with options to go uber-public or virtually non-existent.

In an interesting move users will, for the first time, be able to set how they interact with the overall Facebook platform, ie the applications and games they use, with the option to completely opt out all together.

"It's easy to lose track of where we've got today", said the CEO acknowledging that settings and the site have got out of control. "It's a very different site today than the college network that I built in a couple of weeks in 2004".

The new features will be rolled out in the next couple of weeks.

What do you think? Has Facebook done enough to earn your trust? Let us know in the comments below.