Group Your Friends
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Thursday, October 1st, 2009 (No comments yet) |
One of the most important things you can ever do on your Facebook account is make groups so you can divide your friends. Think about it: do you want your boss, your mother, and your drinking buddies to all have the same access to the same things?
By grouping your friends into categories like Work, Family, and Friends (actual friends, though I wouldn't call it that 
), you can separate which posts, which activities, and which photos each group can see.
First, you click on the "Make new List button on the left side of the screen as shown. If you don't see it, click the "More" button and it should be right there at the bottom.
A pop-up will appear that shows you some of your friends, but the thing you're looking for is at the top where it says "Create New List". Enter a descriptive name (as far as I know, the people in the list won't be able to see the name, but just in case don't enter a name like "People I Hate"). Click on all the friends you want in that group or do a quick search by typing part of a name. Once you're sure everyone is there, then click "Create List" at the bottom.
You're taken to a new page where you can see the activity for just that group. You're done!
Controlling your access by group
Well, almost done. You still have to go and set your privacy based on the groups.
Go into your settings under Privacy > Profile. You'll see the standard list of permissions for who can see what, but check out that bottom option: "Customize…". That's the one you want.
Another popup will open giving you several advanced controls for managing who can see what. For example, if you feel obligated to "friend" your boss, but don't really want them to see the things you post to your wall, click customize in that group and you'll see something like this:
Click on "Some Friends" and now you can type the names of specific friends OR the group that you created 
(also note the VERY important function of being able to exclude specific people by name).
Besides making sure that only the right people see the right things, this saves time from having to constantly be adding every single friend to something. This is particularly useful when posting photos (explained next).
