Meeting Canada's requirements does well to satisfy the requirements of other countries, according to Facebook, as the laws resonate with those of Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

David Young, privacy lawyer and co-chair of the Privacy Law Group at Lang Michener LLP in Toronto, expects Facebook will eventually become the best practice standard for social networking sites globally. Facebook has already been "pushed, nudged and negotiated" along to provide what you could almost call a best practice model, he said.

Young doesn't criticize the Palo Alto-based company for taking five years to adopt the intended model and believes they made "good faith attempts." The U.S. doesn't have a general privacy law, he pointed out. "We have a much deeper and somewhat granular approach to privacy because we have a law that has rules in it," he said.

But the changes wouldn't have happened in Canada either if the complaint wasn't filed by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Young noted. "The federal Commissioner might investigate of her own volition, but in fact it took a complaint to launch the thing," he said.

Independent technology industry analyst Carmi Levy expects to see fewer investigations over the long term as a result of the Facebook inquiry. The agreement is a "bellwether event in the evolution of social media," he said. "I don't think any provider of social media services like Facebook wants to be put in the position that Facebook has been in for the past number of months. Nobody wants to be on the wrong end of a firing squad."