Learning from past incidents, No. 2 U.S. social-network site Facebook engaged in quite a bit of user-testing before rolling out its latest new features, reports Reuters.

Among the changes is a "portal page" that allows users to see on one page the people they're following and the groups they belong to or might join. Previous, unannounced changes led to a bit of backlash from the Facebook community so the site engaged over 100,000 users to provide feedback on the new feature before it was pushed live.

Since then Facebook's users have nearly tripled; it now has 19 million registered users. Membership has grown sigificantly since the site opened itself up to anyone instead of the solely school-based membership it started with.

The site has a reputation for dealing with privacy issues in a more constructive way, which plays a large part in its popularity.