Friend me at: www.facebook.com/JamieDeBree

I joined Facebook about a year ago. A friend of ours had joined, and was sending out invitations like mad, so my hubby and I figured we'd give it a try. In my opinion, it's like a hybrid of blogging and twitter - you have a profile page that you can put personal information on (as much or as little as you'd like), a photo, and a combination of "widgets" of your choosing. The "Home" page is basically a slower twitter type stream, with status updates and links updating from anyone you add to your "friends" list. It's not only a great way to get blog updates from friends and hook up with other writers, but also my preferred way to keep up with family members who are scattered across several states. One of my favorite things about Facebook is that you can categorize your friends into "lists" - and then use those lists to "target" your status updates.

I have quite a few different lists set up, including the standard "Friends" list, and then specific lists for writers, family, nails (nail art enthusiasts), tea (tea enthusiasts), media, and a few others. To create lists, click on "Accounts" in the upper right corner of your facebook page. A menu will drop down - click on "Edit Friends". You'll go to your friends page, and if you scroll down on the left side you'll see "Friends". Click on that and your friends will come up in the center of the page. At the top left of the list, there's a button labeled "Create New List". You can set up as many lists as you'd like from there.  You can also go down your friends list, and to the right of each name is a drop down box - you can add each one to a list (or click "Create New List" at the bottom of the menu) from there. You can put friends in more than one list (ie, some of the people on my "writers" list are also on my "friends" list).

Once you have your lists set up, when you accept a friend request it will give you the option to add the new friend to a list as you're accepting. I would highly suggest you do that - then you won't get behind. You can set default privacy settings for each of these lists, so they can only see what you want them too on your wall/personal info as well. For example, I have a list called "lockdown" for people I don't know and can't determine how to categorize from their limited profile - people on that list can't see any  of my personal information, status updates or wall posts until I put them into another list. Go to "Privacy Settings" in the account menu, and then "Personal Information" to set security settings for specific parts of your facebook account.

Now that you have everyone categorized, you can choose what status updates they see. This is really handy if you only want writers to see writing-related updates, or if you want to keep personal updates for only friends/family, and of course keeping the media from seeing anything but what you want them to see. When you update your status from the home or profile pages, you'll see a little black padlock icon right beside the "Share" button. If you click on that little lock, you'll see a menu. Click on "Custom edit", and you'll get a box that lets you choose to show/hide that particular post from individuals or lists. If you want it to be seen by everyone, just pick "everyone" from the first menu.

It's not perfect - if you import your blog(s) using Networked blogs (which I highly suggest you do - it's great promo and makes it easy for people to keep up), that will show up to everyone on your friends list (unless you set your "default" to only one list). But as far as I know, it works for photos too.

Managing your friends using lists lets you keep things segregated - no need for multiple accounts, and no real need to deny anyone a friend request because people can only see what you choose to show them. For me, it makes me more comfortable that I can network both personally and professionally, blending where I choose, but keeping most things segregated (unlike Twitter - where I tend to forget that my parents watch my tweets, sometimes to my potential detriment).

If you're on Facebook, do you use lists to manage your friends list? If not, do you keep work/personal things separate, or just blend them together? If you're not on Facebook, would using lists make you more comfortable setting up an account?

Next week: Facing Facebook Part 2 - Notifications and Games