Smart Lists, Tickers, and More Oh My! How to Work the New Facebook

I have heard complaint after complaint from friends in my newsfeed about the *New* Facebook, or rather, the Facebook redesign. 

People don't know how to work it or navigate through it. My sister lamented that the page of her employer, the page whose posts she most frequently shared, had disappeared from her newsfeed. And a long lost high school classmate with an infant daughter, posted for the first time in forever, with a simple plea for help.

I, on the other hand, think this new Facebook is beautiful and I was elated to see the changes coming soon: Timeline, deep music and tv integration, and the ability to share content without "liking" it! And so I'm going to do my best to give my friends a walk through of the features currently available to us and to explain to everyone how to set it up to make it easy peasy lemon squeezy! Hopefully you'll love (or at least "like") Facebook again after this!

(If you need a visual aid and don't want to keep switching screens between Patch and Facebook, you can follow along with the gallery of screen shots I took.)

First up, the left side of the page, there's some new stuff over here and there's a lot you can do to play with the order in which these items are listed. I've got my important pages listed, as well as my new lists. There are smart lists, which Facebook has created, and then there are lists that I made. I made the "Friends" list, Facebook generated the rest.

See the little numbers in blue to the right of the list and page names? Those indicate that the list or page has an update. Updates can include, new posts, as well as comments and likes on posts on the list or page. I'll show you how to control this further down.

On a side note, Facebook has recently diminished the amount of email you receive from them. They instead will only notify you via email of things they deem important.

For me this is great. I'm on Facebook all day so I prefer not getting email. But for many of my friends, this makes it difficult to interact and respond in a timely fashion. To change this, go the Notifications section of your profile and tell Facebook what you want to be emailed about.

Back to the right column! You control what appears here and in what order it appears.

Simply hover your mouse to the left of the little icon and a blue pencil will appear. Once you click on the pencil, you'll see two options:  "rearrange" lets you reorder the lists and pages in the column and the "remove from favorites" will remove the list from the top of this column.

Consequently, the pencil for the the groups, lists, pages, and apps sections further down the left side, will reveal an add to favorites button. If you click on a list, the newsfeed for that list appears, as does a photo collage of those on the list. It'll also include suggestions of people for you to add to the list.

You can also add people to the list by typing the person's name in the box below the collage or by clicking on the manage list button above the collage.

The "manage list" button will reveal several choices. Here you can control the updates for which you will be notified, merge one list with another, change this list name, delete it and control who is or is not on the list. If you chose to add or remove friends from here, the friends box pops up.

You have several choices here, and can select people to whom you subscribe. (In short, subscribing is a one way friendship. You see the person's PUBLIC updates, while they see nothing from you.) However it is more adventageous to create two-way links to people you actually want to interact with, like your friends. 

I've got my high school friends, my college friends, my family, my close friends, my not-so-close friends, the subscriptions, friends and pages I have for work, and then the pages I follow for personal reasons.

It is SO nice to be able to split everyone up. AND if I'm on a list page and chose to post a status update, the default is to only share to that list. It's so nice to drill down and be able to check in on each group, or read work content on the quick!

And then we have the TICKER! I love the ticker. It indulges my short attention span and shares with me more info than I EVER saw on my newsfeed. I even figured out who some of the people are that have unfriended me because they showed up on my ticker via some of my current Facebook friends interactions!

The ticker is the minutia of Facebook, and your newsfeed is now the important stuff. And have you noticed how great the photos are in there now?

On your main newsfeed, you've got your ticker flowing away, and then the important stuff from all of your Facebook friends, pages, and subscriptions. Click on that little arrow at the top right of each update and you've got a slew of options.

Do the same thing on a list and you can remove them from that list, as you'll see below.

As for you and your updates, to the left of the post button is the button that delegates to whom your update is shared. There are tons of options from which to chose and it can change as often as you post.

While all of these changes seem big and scary and hard to navigate, in the end they actually make Facebook that much more personal and give you that much more control over what you're sharing.

I set up my lists the other day, based mostly on what Facebook had already created for me and it took me about an hour to get it all how I wanted it. I'm tweaking them as I use them too.

They even have a restricted list that lets you prevent people from seeing anything but the posts you make public. This is handy for those friend requests you receive that you don't want to decline because you don't want to offend the person but whom you really don't want to share all aspects of your life. It's also handy if you are using Facebook for work and personal use. You can keep the two separate and enjoy both!

I hope this has been helpful for you, and if you have more questions please ask away! I'm sure I've left something out!

Originally posted on MollyWhiteMarketing.com