We are continuing with the series of posts on the recent Facebook changes. This is the second post with tips on making Custom Friend Lists. If you missed the first post, click here for Tips on Subscriptions and Privacy.
Facebook gives you “Smart Lists” – family, close friends, school friends, work friends, network friends, friends in your city/town, aquaintenances…
Some of these smart lists are automatically populated by Facebook; for others, you will need to manually add friends. Note: if you add a friend to certain Smart Lists – Family, Employer, Network – they will receive a notification!
You also have the option of making your own “Custom” Lists: just click on Lists – More in the far left column of your home page. This brings up all your current lists. Then click on Create a List, give it a name (that is only visible to you) and start adding people. Note: your friends do not get notified when you place them on a Custom List.
You can also manage the types of updates you see from friends on your lists. When you click on a List, look for “Manage Lists” (far right, top of page). You can then Choose Update Types and click on Updates to Show. So if you are not interested in seeing your friends’ posts about games or music and videos, just “uncheck” them.
Why would you want to spend time creating lists and organizing your friends into these lists? Well, once the List has been created you can just click on it (far left column of your home page) and this customized feed takes the place of your default “News Feed” (where the Top Stories, Recent Stories and Ticker appear).
I always like to read status updates in chronological order, which has become much more complicated with Facebook’s process of determining which stories are Top Stories to me. When you are reading updates in your Custom List’s feed, they all show up in chronological order – with no Top Stories/Recent Stories or Ticker on the side to distract you!
Plus, when you are in the feed of one of your Lists, you can write a status update and only the friends on that List will see it. (If you are on the default News Feed and write a status update you need to remember to choose your audience: public, friends, custom, etc). Note: You will see this when you write a status update in the feed of a Custom List. Notice the icon to the left of the “Post” button in the update status box – it should be the name of your Custom List.
My next post will give a few tips on the Ticker, Business Pages and other miscellaneous changes. Then look for a whole new series of posts when the new Timeline is released!
About Terry League