Lists
Friend Lists are a way you can group your Facebook Friends (as opposed to pages). This is particularly useful if you prefer to not share everything with your entire friends list. Facebook has a few friends lists automatically included with “automatic” settings such as Close Friends (display frequently in your newsfeed), Acquaintances (show up less in your newsfeed), Restricted (can only see “Public” posts) . These groups are already available in the left side menu via “Friends”. You can add or remove friends to these lists as you wish.
I do however, recommend caution with the “Close Friends” list – I originally put a heap of people in my Close Friends list and got inundated with notifications every time they posted anything! Now I use it for a couple of close friends who only post once in a blue moon. That way I’m not drowning in notifications, both in FB and on my mobile phone, but I don’t miss anything from people who used to get lost in the newsfeed.
Family, Work Groups, School Groups, Geographical Groups are all created by Facebook. They’re only taking that information from the information in your friends profiles, so it’s worth editing them yourself.
As you can see, I have several lists of my own, that I made up before Facebook bought in the automated lists, and because there are some lists I wanted that Facebook didn’t automatically provide so I continue to use them rather than the automatic lists.
Sharing
The best use of the lists, whether they’re lists you made yourself, or lists that Facebook has created, is to share information with certain groups of people. For example, if you want to share information about a job search that you’d prefer your current workmates weren’t aware of, you can create a group for “workmates” then click “Custom” and add the group Workmates to the “Hide this from” box. Note, you can also just enter the name/s of anyone you don’t want to see a specific post.
The post sharing options are:
- Public – anyone can see the post
- Friends – only people you’ve accepted as friends can see the post, subscribers cannot
- Only Me – only you can see the post
- Custom – is where you can nominate people or lists to hide the post from, or post to just one specific lists
- You can also post to just a certain group by using the drop-down to select only the 1 list you want to share with.
If you don’t already have lists set up, it’s a lot of work to go through and set them up – but depending on what you post, and how strongly you feel about privacy, it might be worth the effort. Even if you just set up a group or two for “restricted” friends and acquaintances.
