Everyone is talking about Circles, but Facebook Lists are a great way to keep things private and relevant. It’s worth taking a little time to set up Facebook Lists to keep your Circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances separate. Just yesterday, I mentioned to a friend that I only have my Facebook Chat open to certain Lists, and she admitted that she didn’t know that was possible.
Create Lists
If you haven’t already, you can create lists under Account/Edit Friends. Think of the groups of friends you might have, and how you might interact differently with one group vs. another. I have Lists for friends, family, co-workers, people from my home town, and a couple of Lists I want to give limited access to.
Add People to Lists
Facebook makes it easy to add people to Lists. You can scroll through them one at a time, or you can let Facebook “Suggest” people to add to a List. I was surprised at how intelligently Facebook made suggestions for each List, based on who was in the List already. It quickly allowed me to fill up each List, even though I have a bunch of friends that weren’t in any Lists.
Control What Each List Sees
You’ve probably heard about Facebook Privacy settings, but if not, you should take a little time to adjust the settings for each List. Look under Account/Privacy Settings. I have a couple of groups that I don’t want to share some information with, like a few of my kids’ friends that added me. For example, I block them from knowing what locations I check into. To exclude some Lists, select Customize Settings, then select “Customize” from the drop down list for each of the “Things I share”
Select Some Lists for Chat
Once you have your Lists set up, it’s easy to narrow down those you want to Chat with. Simply turn off the slider switch to appear offline to some of your Lists.
Share a status update with a List
You might want to share some information with only some of your Lists. Under the update, select the lock icon, and if you want to exclude some lists, select Customize. Simple as that.
Taking a bit of time to set up Lists can enhance your privacy, and make Facebook a more enjoyable place to be for everyone.
