Facebook on Wednesday introduced new privacy features that enable users to control what their various networks see.

The privacy features take advantage of "friends' lists," which the company introduced in December to help members organize friends in their network into groups. These private lists allow users to target messages to selected friends or filter what personal details those groups see.

Matt Cohler, Facebook's vice president of product management, told reporters the company was seeking to evolve beyond the simple privacy controls originally aimed at relatively homogenous groups of college-age users.

"We have a lot more users, a lot more types of users, a lot more relationships, we have a lot more types of relationships," Cohler said.

Since opening up the social network beyond the college crowd, Facebook has faced several protests from users regarding privacy. When it introduced its News Feed and Mini Feed features, which allowed users to get updates when friends modified personal data, a Facebook group called "Students Against Facebook News Feed" gathered more than 30,000 signatures on an online petition in protest.

Most recently, Facebook's Beacon ad program drew complaints from MoveOn.org and others for its potential privacy invasion.