Do you know where your friends are?

…in the new facebook homepage? If you answered “yea, in the News Feed, duh” you’re only partially correct.Where is Joe X you know from college or Tiffany X that you met at a networking event last week? If they’re not being active and publishing that activity to the News Feed, you’re not going to find them there.

Previously, facebook had a handy little “Friends” link at the top navigation that you could click to view all of your friends regardless of whether or not they were being active on facebook. The new homepage design got rid of that link and replaced it with a “Friends” link on the left navigation which is quite deceiving. Clicking on the new friends link won’t display all of your friends, it will display all of your friends that are active. That’s why numbers pop up next to the new friends link to notify you when there is new activity. Click on that link and you’ll discover “oh wow, Nina X changed her relationship status” along with much more useless information that you weren’t bargaining for…that is, if facebook decides to work at the time you click. Be ware of the ever present “Oops! Something went wrong. We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can. You may be able to try again.” Hey, thanks facebook!

So, if you are intent on adding a friend to a list you previously created (let’s say you forgot to add your boss to your “work” list which only allows people to view your photo and info but not wall) – good luck with that. You’re not going to figure it out unless you do a little digging like I did.

You are accountable for your friends

That’s right, a full list of your friends are now located under the account tab in the top right corner of your browser. A drop down list appears which displays a link for “edit friends”. Clicking that link will have you sighing with relief as the recognizable friends list reappears.

What do you think of the new change on facebook?

Why create friend lists?

Facebook friend lists are a great way to define what information you share with different people.

…Because you might not want to broadcast that you’re not liking your boss today to all your co-workers via your status, or maybe because you’d rather not have your aunt Laura checking out your photos from last weekend’s happy hour. Whatever the case may be, we tend to share a lot of information on social networks and don’t always realize how much and with whom we share that info.

The Facebook friend list feature is a great way to separate friends and define what information particular lists are allowed to see. They help control your privacy and are quite easy to create too!

Making the List

1. Creating a friend list is actually very simple. Log in to your facebook account and click on “friends” from the main navigation. Above your friends will be 3 buttons…you got it, click on “create list”.
2. A box will appear that will prompt you for a name for the list, go ahead – name it! Work, family, Malibu Barbies…whatever your heart desires.
3. Select the friends you wish to add to the list and then click ok.
4. A link to your  new list will now appear under “Lists” in the left navigation.
5. When you add a new friend you can choose to add them to a list.

I’ve Got a List, Now What?

Now it’s time to define what information is available to the list. “On the Profile section of your Privacy Settings page, clicking “Edit Custom Settings” will open a field for “Except these people.” Adding a friend or Friend List name here will hide the information in question from these people when they view your profile” (Facebook.com). If you have someone added to multiple lists, Facebook will always use the list settings with the highest privacy.

If at any time you decide, say “Tom” if your friend again and you’d like to share your photos with him just go to the friends page, find “Tom” and on the right you’ll have the option of adding or removing him from lists. It’s just that simple.

Facebook has so many options that it can be hard to figure out how to do simple tasks; I hope this blog post has helped you define lists and privacy settings. Now go ahead – get started creating friend lists…if you have a couple hundred friends it might take awhile!