Managing Friends Lists

You may have a ton of Facebook friends, but not all friendships are created equal, am I right? That's why when it comes to Facebook friends, managing your friends list is super important. Don't worry. I'm going to break it all down. Life is crazy. I mean, who has time to keep up with all the latest in social networking? I'm Carley Knobloch, and if you stick with me, I'll show you all the tech tools you need to get socially connected. It's great to use Facebook to stay up to date with friends, but at some point you probably aren't interested in seeing your neighbor's 14th check-in, but you are interested in staying up to the minute with everything going on in your best friend's world. Let's do some fine tuning here. First, move people into specific categories, like close friends, acquaintances, family, or this restricted list. This is perfect for people who you felt like you needed to friend, but you don't want them to see any of your updates - like your boss. Hello, sir. When you click on the 'Close Friends' button, you can start populating your list. She goes in, and so does she, and now their updates will appear in my News Feed. Then there are those people that I like, but I wouldn't quite call them my friends, so I can put them in another group called acquaintances. Organizing everyone by list means I can opt to keep my News Feed tidier by shutting off regular updates from an entire group with one click. Also, when I post an update, I can select exactly who gets to see it. Everyone? No, just my family this time. Just know that when you start organizing your friends in categories, they don't get notified, and nobody disappears from your main list. This is just for your own organizational purposes. If you want to get really fancy, you can even refine what types of updates show up in your News Feed. So maybe you're interested in someone's Life Events and their likes and comments, but not what apps they're using. It's a bit painstaking, but if you want to, Facebook lets you control it all. Now, what about unfriending? Awkward. Well, not really. If you want to unfriend someone, just click on their profile, go to the Friends settings, and choose 'Unfriend'. They don't get notified, you just both get removed from each others list. It's not you, it's me. Here's the thing: unless you feel really, really strongly about them, just relegate them to that restricted list, and then they'll only see updates that you make very very public. Otherwise, if you think you've made a mistake and you have to reinvite them to be friends again, now that's awkward. One more thing: if you want to see the public updates of someone that you don't know, you can subscribe whether you're friends or not, and to keep up-to-date with a business you like, just like their business page. Speaking of which, be sure to like the eHow Facebook page to stay socially connected with us, and if you want to see more tutorials on Facebook, check them all out at eHow Tech. Thanks!