Facebook Lists Get Smart With Automation & Suggestions

Today Facebook announced enhancements to lists, including the release of “smart lists.”  This new functionality helps to auto-generate lists for users, a task that was somewhat arduous in the past.

Smart Lists

The new smart list feature gives users assistance in list creation. Facebook will actually be auto-generating lists based on user attributes. for example:

For instance, if you list Boston College as a school you’ve attended and your friends John and Sarah do too, then you would instantly have a smart list called “Boston College” with John and Sarah on it.

The categories that will make up these auto-generated smart lists are:

• Work
• School
• Family
• City

Close Friends and Acquaintances Lists

The close friends list and acquaintances lists will appear for all users and will help to filter the content that actually makes it into your news feed. If you’ve added someone as a close friend, you will see all of their content, if they are on the acquaintances list, you will only see a portion of their posts.

List Suggestions

When adding new connections, Facebook will now assist you in adding users to lists. Facebook will now try to identify what list a user will be added to by their profile.

The sharing options at the wall post level is also improved, allowing for simple lists based posting in an icon laden dropdown:

For more information, follow Facebook Lists right on Facebook!

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.