Facebook Tips

If you're like me, you have several hundred friends on Facebook. Although you may technically know everyone you're friends with, a good portion of those "friends" may be people you have near-zero interest in. Or, said more politely, a small group of those friends you have a very high interest in. And yet the Facebook news feed indiscriminately delivers updates on all of them. It doesn't have to be this way! Using friend lists you can filter the news feed content to show stories from only those friends you are truly interested in.

To start, go to your friends page. In the left column you have the option to create a new friend list. Go ahead and create one and add some of your close friends to the list. Once your done, go back to the main "Home" page. In the tabs above the news feed you have an arrow on the far right. If you click it, you'll see that you can filter your stories by your friend lists. Select a friend list and the news feed refreshes to only show stories by or about them. You can actually edit your friend list right on the news feed page by clicking "Edit" in the dropdown menu you get when you click the arrow.

You can do some nice organizing with friend lists. I have two systems, one is to create various "Tiers" of friends. Tier 1 friends I talk with on a regular basis. Tier 2 friends I do not talk to regularly, but could call at anytime without feeling uncomfortable, and so on. In addition to the "Tier" system I have friends lists based on time periods of my life (college, mission, etc.).

I also further refine the news feed by clicking the "Options for News Feed" link at the very bottom of the feed. This allows you to change what type of stories show up, as opposed to our earlier efforts to control whose stories show up. You can actually request more stories for some people and less for others here, but I find the filtering by friend lists technique to be more flexible.