If you have joined Google+, you'll know what circles are. It is a way to group your friends-family-associates into groups. When you post something, you can share with the world ("public") or you can limit who you share with by applying only to a circle. Inversely, if it feels like you have subscribed to SO MANY people and you look at your main feed, it is like drinking water out of a fire hose, then circles are also great. You can say filter (OR LIMIT) the newsfeed to only show posts from a particular circle. For me, circles include groups like "Tech" or "Real Estate" or "Photography" and so on.
Facebook has been able to do this type of useful "share with limited" and "show limited" types of modes also, but the user interface is poorly designed (inserting my opinion). It is not obvious and intuitive enough. They have made it slightly better since Google+ came along, but it still is not great in user friendliness yet. Thus, let me take you on a quick tour to highlight some things. Once you see it, it will make MUCH MORE SENSE. :)
First, notice on the left sidebar, you have a Friends section. Hover your mouse there, what do you see? A LINK that says "more"
So unless you stumble upon that link or have somebody show you, this is missed!
Once you go to "MORE" you can then see lists! You see the default lists, plus you add your own custom lists by clicking on the "Create List" button at the top.
On the lists page, you also have a pencil icon next to each list. This will only give you the options to delete a list or add it to your favorites. If you want to manage who is on the list, you need to click on the name of a specific list to go to the feed page for that list.
As you can see below, on a list page, the upper right of the page is a "Manage List" button (then choose the "Edit List" option). When you do that, a pop-up window appears. At the top of the pop-up, choose "Friends" to display and then you can go through your entire friends list to click to add new people into the group. (This is MUCH faster than going to each friends home page to add them to the list from there).
Once you have gone to a list page, it will show up on the left sidebar under "Friends" section as a recent visit for easy recall again later.
If you want to give it a permanent place on the left sidebar, click the pencil icon next to the name and "add to favorites". The favorites list lives at the top of your left sidebar and makes it easy to revisit these pages again now that you have worked so hard to collate your info into manageable chunks.
Facebook comes with a default Family List and Close Friends List. Now you know how to use these lists and create more of your own! Sometimes you feel like you might share more of your life (photos, thoughts) if you knew it wasn't going out to every acquaintance, client, and Joe that you don't really know too well. If you want to share something with a limited set of people. Simply go to the page based on the list that you created. The post box on that page will default to send ONLY to that list of people. Now you can share different parts of your life that would be interesting to more specific people!
Also, having lists allows you narrow your incoming feed down to better not miss something that your only-two-posts-a-week-friend said a few days ago. Special friends and family get put into key lists, when you get to that list, you catch up on their lives that would have otherwise been washed downstream by the people that post many times per day. If you only ever looked at your main feed, this would be true! Try it. You'll be surprised how many posts you would have otherwise missed!
So Facebook lists give you a very useful way to read and share. I hope you find this useful and your FB experience might take on a whole new look and feel!
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