There are friends and then there are some special friends. Until now, Facebook has weighed them all on the same scale. In fact, Google Plus exploited this very weakness to great effect with its circles feature. However, that’s all set to change with Facebook’s new Smart List and Special Friend List. The underlying principle is simple – the one size fits all rule just doesn’t work when it comes to friendship so there got to be a way to treat friends differently.
In this post, I explain the new lists (Smart List and Special Friend List) in layman terms and how you can best leverage these to good effect.
Smart List
For those who are on Google+, Smart Lists are essentially the circles for Facebook. In fact, it’s one step ahead of G+ circles. Smart Lists automatically group your Facebook friends in these different categories: family, city, high school, college and work. All the people in your feed who listed that they went to your same school or college will automatically be added to those feeds, and all the people who list where they work will be added to your work friends group.
So, users are saved the hassle of being forced to add people in lists manually. The best part – you can turn it off and customize it as per your needs.
In this post, I express my opinion on how Facebook doubled its revenues and what your business can learn from it.
Special Friend List
IMO, Facebook has hit bull’s eye with this one. This was one of my biggest paint points on the world’s leading social network. I have lots of Facebook friends but my news feed is always cluttered with updates from not-so-close friends. With special friend list, users can now add friends to an “Acquaintances” list whose members will appear less frequently in the news feed, and a “Close Friends” list of people who will appear more frequently in news feed and whose updates will trigger notifications.
How to best use these lists?
It’s often said that “To change is difficult, but not to change is fatal”. And that’s especially true of social media where technology changes faster than we can imagine. As expected, a large number of Facebook users’ initial reaction is that they would rather stay away from these changes. However, a deeper introspection will reveal that these changes are indeed intended to make life easier on Facebook.
For a start, I’d recommend giving these lists a try. Once your smart list is setup, ensure that there are no discrepancies. If there are any, fix them right away in order to avoid later surprises.
Work Lists
Facebook actually prepares these lists for you. Make sure that the content you post to these lists isn’t overtly personal or objectionable. Further, if there’s stuff that you’d like to hide from your current and previous employers, make sure that you segregate these into 2 separate lists.
Close Friends
These are the people who matter most in your personal life. Be judicious in choosing your ‘close’ friends as your news feed will show more from those on your “Close Friends” list than from people in your “Acquaintances” list.
Share with the right people
When it comes to sharing information, I follow the golden rule – never tell people what they don’t need to know and never hide facts that they should know. Customize your lists if required to follow this principle and you can be rest assured that your privacy wouldn’t be breached.
What’s your opinion on Facebook’s recently announced lists? How do you plan to best use these lists? Please share your experience by leaving a comment.
Is too late? if Google+ obtain 100 millions followers this year facebook need to think how maintain his IPO value the following year or to do this year.Now are talking over the possibility become a history like yahoo with a indestructibly position going down in three years.The times of internet are going so quick.we are in the begining of the end repetid history.The correction of smart list was caothic yesterday
I’m trying to see the good in facebk’s changes. Thanks for your neutral/generous POV. Helps counter my impatience with them.
I’ve been using Facebook lists for 2 years… The problem was they were not easy to locate and only 5% of the users had them. Google definitely capitalized on this with Circles, and FB had to find a way to promote something that’s been around for years…
you touch briefly on not telling people what they don’t need to know – i’d like to set it so what i tell my close friends is not visible to everyone else unless i choose it to be – is this possible? Can anyone suggest a mechanism for this cos if the new lists are just a convenience screen to limit posts to my home page – i can do that quite well by ignoring
: -)
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Thanks for sharing info. Keep up the good work…
But I need to suggest friends for a buddy but he is in this smart list in Family and in my area and I can’. I don’t know how to do. Maybe smart list are fixed and we can’t change the persons inside, that’s not so ok
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