Facebook Improves Organization of Friends List

Improved Friend Lists

Source: From The Facebook Blog on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:59am

This week, it will be easier than ever to see more from the people you care about and simpler to share with exactly the right people using Friend Lists.

Want to see posts from your closest friends? Or perhaps you’d like to share a personal story with your family””without also telling all your co-workers. With improved Friend Lists, you can easily see updates from and share with different lists of friends.

Lists have existed for several years, but you’ve told us how time-consuming it is to organize lists for different parts of your life and keep them up to date.

To make lists incredibly easy and even more useful, we’re announcing three improvements:

• Smart lists – You’ll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you–like your work, school, family and city.
• Close Friends and Acquaintances lists – You can see your best friends’ photos and posts in one place, and see less from people you’re not as close to.
• Better suggestions – You can add the right friends to your lists without a lot of effort.

Smart Lists

Managing lists is boring. That’s why smart lists do the work for you. To start, we’ll offer you smart lists for:

• Work
• School
• Family
• City

For instance, if you list Boston College as a school you’ve attended and your friends John and Sarah do too, then you would instantly have a smart list called “Boston College” with John and Sarah on it. This means that if you’re having a grad party or a college reunion, you can easily share photos with just your college friends, without bothering other people you know.

You can also add or remove friends manually to make the lists even more accurate.

Close Friends and Acquaintances Lists

• Close Friends list – Add your best friends to your Close Friends list and you’ll see everything they post in News Feed. You can even jump straight to a view of your News Feed that only shows their photos and news. You can also receive notifications when they post updates, so you don’t miss anything important.

• Acquaintances list – Add friends like old classmates or business contacts to your Acquaintances list and you’ll see less of them in your News Feed. We’ll still show you important things they post — like when they get married or move to a new city — so you don’t lose touch completely.

Okay, what about your boss or the few other people you like but just don’t want to share with on Facebook? You can add these folks to your Restricted list and they will only see your Public posts. You’ll still be friends on Facebook so you can send them messages or tag them in a post if you want to connect to them from time to time. It’s totally up to you.

Unlike your smart lists for your work, school, family and city, we don’t create Close Friends and Acquaintances lists for you. Since these types of relationships are unique, it’s important for you to decide who goes in your Close Friends, Acquaintances or Restricted lists — if you use them at all.

If you created your own lists in the past, you can still use them. You can also continue to create whatever lists you want in the future. When you post something to a list that you’ve created — including your Close Friends and Acquaintances lists — no one will be able to see the title of the list.

The people on the list you’ve shared with will be able to see each others’ names. This gives them more context. For example, if I see that a post is shared with my five closest friends, I am much more likely to comment freely on it than I would be if I didn’t know who else could see the post.

Better Suggestions

We provide suggestions for your smart lists, Close Friends, Acquaintances, and your own lists, making them easier to create and update.

When you add someone as a friend or confirm a friendship request, you’ll be able to add the friend to any of your existing lists.

See and Share With Exactly Who You Want

Each of your lists has its own News Feed, where you can see just the photos, status updates and other posts from the people on the list. To view list News Feeds, look for the Lists section on the left side of your homepage and click the list you want to see.

Whenever you feel like sharing something with a narrower set of friends, simply use the dropdown audience selector in the sharing tool and pick one of your lists.

You can also use lists to help control who sees what on your profile, using the audience selector next to each detail on your profile.

Improved Friend lists will be available to everyone this week. We’d love to hear your feedback at facebook.com/ListsTeam.