New Facebook Friends List

The Custom Friends List Feature was already available. I am sure that many of you have custom listed many friends in categories like: Schoolmates/Classmates, Colleagues, Best Friends, Just Friends, Extended Friends, Family/Parents, Relatives/Extended Relatives, “Not so Close Friends”, “Have to Keep them as Friends”, etc. Facebook rolled out a new set of friends list standardizing and defining them into specific categories:

• Close Friends
• Acquaintances
• Smart Lists (Work, School, Family, City)
• Subscription (Following/People You Follow) and  Subscribers (Followers or Fans)
• Restricted Friends

Close Friends or Featured Friends

Close Friends are those, whose updates come to you as notification when you add them. However, you can turn off the notification from the Close Friends List Page. The updates from the people tagged as Close Friends, will also have higher priority in your homepage news feed, than others.

Who are the best candidates for Close Friends?

• Buddies that you want more updates from
• Updates from family members you don’t want to miss
• Someone you have crush on
• Who’s updates are more important than normal friends
• Friends you share common interests with, etc.

Acquaintances

Updates from your Acquaintances will be rarely shown in Facebook homepage news feed. But, you will not miss their most important updates, like: Relationship status changes or migration to a new city. Rather than un-friending, this list can be a good choice to keep your friends with the mute button pressed.

People with probable candidacy for Acquaintances:

• Your close friend who updates noting but Gaming Resource sharing (assuming, you don’t like them)
• Link spammers or self promoting friends that you have to keep
• Your high school bullies,
• Annoying family members or relatives,
• Someone you don’t want to interact with much, but want them to get your updates to them, etc.

Smart Lists

Facebook introduced many smart lists (friend lists with a lightning icon) in the friend list feature. e.g. colleagues, family members, classmates, and local friends within same city. When you mention your work place (company), education institution, and cities; you will find them as separate friend list in smart lists, like:

• Family members and relatives
• Colleagues, boss, and friends within same company you mention on your profile
• Classmates from school, college, university or other institutions
• Friends and buddies in the same locality/city that you currently live in.

When you mention multiple companies and education institution, you also get smart lists for each company and institution. Family members are filled by the various relationships defined on your profile. But, you also have the freedom to go to the Family Smart List Page and add new family members without defining any relationship. In Facebook, you can not mention more than one city. So, the list for local friends can have just one listing.

Optimizing Custom Friend List

Custom Friend Lists is an old feature. But, since you now have smart lists, it is better to merge some lists and remove the unnecessary custom friend list from Facebook. However, for getting better updates, you can still have some custom friend list to serve your purposes. With the new changes, you can optimize them to serve your needs. Some Custom Friend List optimization techniques are:

Merge Friend List

If you have already defined a list before, you can go to the close friend, acquaintances, smart list pages and merge the existing list to make a separate channel for various types of Facebook friends you have.  This will help you to utilize the predefined friend list by Facebook better.

Delete Some Custom Friend List

Since you already have some predefined friend list, it is wise to delete some of the custom friend list. This will help you to avoid duplication. But, make sure you merge the lists before you delete them.

Create Some New Custom List

For various purposes, you have the freedom to create more custom friend lists. One of the problems with the new friend list feature is that, you cannot see all colleagues and classmates together. But, you always have the freedom to create new custom friend list for them and merge them together from the previous lists.

Restricted Friends

The friends that you keep in Restricted Friend list will not see all your updates on their homepage, but they will get to see all your public contents that you tag them in. Otherwise, you are mostly mute to them. Unless, they define you as restricted friends, they are not mute to you. Facebook friends that you can put in this list are:

• Your boss
• Your competitors
• Friends from other companies, always trying to spy on you
• Your opponent or political contender
• Someone you don’t want to get any idea about what you are doing, etc.

Subscribers and Subscriptions

Facebook also rolled out the Subscribers and Subscription feature in the new update. This makes Facebook more like Twitter and Google Plus, where you can have followers and follow people without adding them as friends. Subscribers and Subscriptions are not actually friend lists as they are not ‘friends’.  In another word, you can define them as your personal celebrity and followers.

Subscribers: When someone subscribes on your profile, s/he becomes your fans and follower of you public posts only. In analogy with Twitter, this is the list of “Followers” you have.

Subscription: When you subscribe someone on their profile, the Subscription tab in your Timeline shows the people you are subscribed to. In analogy with Twitter, this is the list of “Following”. You will get updates on only their public feeds on your homepage.

You can activate subscription from the Subscribe Button Page. Celebrities who have large fan-base, they can use this feature to make their Facebook profile as the major media of communication or public updates. The public updates, however remains within the walled garden of Facebook. And to see them, you need to be logged into your Facebook Account. So, this is a bit different than Facebook Fan Pages for celebrities.

There can be 4 types of Subscribers:

Regular Subscribers

These are the people that hit only the “Subscribe” button on your profile. They are your followers that have interest in your public feeds. I am quite optimistic that, many marketers will come up with tips and tricks to increase your subscribers in near future.

Friend Subscribers

When you add a friend now, through friend request, you automatically subscribe to his/her public updates. But, when they add you as friend, they also subscribes to your feeds. This type of mutual subscription is called Friend Subscribers.

Unfriended Subscribers

Your friend is also subscribing to your updates. When you remove or unfriend a friend, you automatically unsubscribe from his/her updates. But, the subscription to your public feed is not changed at your unfriended friend’s end. So, s/he still remains subscribed to your feeds. So, these types of subscribers are called Unfriended Subscribers. When you plan to remove unwanted friends, you will eventually increase the number of Subscribers.

Pending Friend Subscribers

When you hit the “Add as friend” button on your new friend’s profile or somewhere else, you automatically get subscribed to his/her public updates, even if s/he  does not add you back as friend. However, you will not see his/her updates, unless you add him/her or subscribe to his/her feeds. And once s/he adds you, you don’t remain a “Pending Friend Subscriber”, you become a “Friend Subscriber” or just friends.

Other Types of Friends You Can Have on Facebook

Mute Friends

What happens when you hit the unsubscribe button on a friend’s profile? The result is a mute friend. This is will turn off all the updates from a friend. This is why it is a bit different than Acquaintances. Acquaintances are semi-mute friends whose important updates are shown to you. But, without un-friending a friend, you have the freedom to mute a friend by unsubscribing from their friend as well as public updates. However, as a friend you will have the freedom to visit their profile or timeline to see their updates.

Deaf Friends

This is the just the opposite affected party who mutes friends. These types of friends totally unsubscribe from your updates and do not respond to any. But, just like mute friends, your updates can be seen by your unsubscribed friend on your profile.

Subscription in Friend List

In case of pending friend subscribers, you have public updates of a person that is not yet your friend in Facebook. But, Can you add a subscription in Friend List so that the updates come to a specific friend list? The answer is no. I guess Facebook needs to open up this feature.

Some corporations move with the opposite mindset.  As genuine investors, they cultivate fans that are secured into an digital source for assets.  Chris Perry of Advertising Age comes up with ten fundamental principles for brands to leverage their social media fans and become an online investor.  I’ll draw out a few key statements.

1) What “Like” Means – Understand what an individual “liking” your brand says about them today, and set goals for what it should say about them tomorrow.  Your core base will come easily.  They were already fans of the brand and this is why they have “liked” your page – the brand has not added these fans, it’s simply assembled them.  It’s expanding and winning new audiences that pays dividends.

2) Put your fans to work – The sheer numbers of fans have clout only when put to use.  Powerful investor brands activate their audience as advocates.  Put those who like you to work by giving them reasons to interact with the brand and provide a platform where their enthusiastic support is amplified to their networks.  Facebook is a great place for activities.  Give your audience things to “like”, to use, to share, to post, to comment on.  Reward them as appropriate for your industry, segment, restrictions, budget and product – with applications, activities, social currency, exposure, affirmation, discounts, access, entertainment, responsiveness and respect.

3) Listen to your fans and respond to what you hear – Your Facebook community is a great source of research, product innovation ideas, consumer advocacy, customer service, and validation.  Monitor consistently and seriously, and be willing to stop and listen at every point and to change and respond and reset expectations when you identify new challenges and opportunities.  Understand that outside forces can impact your standing online so keep an eye out to mitigate risk and to anticipate if activities have impact on your perceived value.  Pay close attention to audience responses and be nimble in your response.  Be mindful of privacy and transparent with marketing.

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