Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Facebook Releases Improved Friends Lists Update



To make Friend lists incredibly easy to manage, Facebook has just released three major improvements in friend list:

1. Smart lists

2. Close Friends and Acquaintances lists

3. Better suggestions.






Blake Ross, Facebook, in an official post on their bog revealed about the new features.
He wrote,

"This week, it will be easier than ever to see more from the people you care about and simpler to share with exactly the right people using Friend Lists."

Looks like we will witness something very similar what we use in Google+. Google+ powers users with such feature with which you can see post from a particular circle, share with them, and perform some closed activities.

Facebook has the feature of managing friend list from years, but for most of users it was meaningless as it does not have enough functionality and also consumes a lot of time.

Lets first look what's new in Facebook:

Details about the new feature[via official post]:
1. Smart Lists - You'll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you--like your work, school, family and city.
In Initial stages Facebook is offering some smart lists as Work, School, Family and City.

For instance you have Cambridge University as your college and some of your friends also have same college then a list named "Cambridge University" will automatically be added as one of your smart list. After that you can also add and remove friends manually.


2. Close Friends and Acquaintances lists - You can see your best friends' photos and posts in one place, and see less from people you're not as close to. Similar functionality goes for Acquaintances lists.

3. Better suggestions - New feature provides suggestions for your smart lists, Close Friends, Acquaintances, and your own lists, making them easier to create and update. While adding a user as your friend, you'll be able to add the friend to any of your existing lists.

Now every list will be having its own news feed where you can find updates from your friends that are in that list. Similarly you can share your updates with a group of friends via same smart list.


Improved Friend lists will be available to everyone this week.

As many of the Google+ users must have noticed this feature completely looks like "Circles" of Google+. Similar functionality is available and benchmark of G+. Now all Facebook lovers will be able to use some similar kind of functionality.

Also Read | Facebook Testing New Summary Email Feature


This kind of move from Facebook clearly suggests that it does not want any of its user to move from their platform simply because some other platform is providing some good features. Like in this case its Google+. One major difference between Circles of Google+ and new Facebook feature is that automatic functionality of addition is involved in Facebook Smart lists.
But question is what all features will be added like this? Don't you think users like and appreciate something new.

NEW | Facebook Introduces New Subscribe Button

How does Google+ see these updates from Facebook?

Please share your views on the same via comments.

Cheers,
Team