No big surprise to see Facebook in a position where it has to change an unpopular feature or policy. This is, after all, the company that brought us the widely criticized Beacon.

Last night, the company announced to its 175 million users that it is reversing course and discarding its new terms of service agreement - one of those legal documents that govern our relationship with companies like Facebook.

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

The change basically said Facebook’s licence on user content would no longer expire, even if users deleted their accounts. It prompted a variety of complaints and a threat of legal action - with users worried about their privacy and the fate of photos and other things posted on profile pages.

On the Facebook blog, founder Mark Zuckerberg explained that the company’s terms of service, in general, are now up for review.

Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.

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Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.