An active user on Facebook would inevitably gather a large number of friends. Yet not all friends will share the same opinion with the user or even one another. So at times the wall postings end up a common battleground between friends on a different end of the divide. It also become a chore to do damage control and peace keeper among friends, and it becomes annoying and time wasting when certain idiots incessantly rant on without getting the point in ‘agreeing to disagree’ or ‘just shut up and shove it up the other end of their alimentary canal’.
Fortunately, with privacy settings and ‘friend lists’, you can now create lists so certain exceptionally pesky individuals can be shut out of your wall posts, or target wall posts and specific users. The purpose of this post is to demonstrate how to create ‘friend lists’, and how to manipulate the privacy settings in Facebook to deny your wall posts to certain users, or to deliver them to a group specifically.
This is exceptionally useful if you can’t stop yourself from the urge to say something about your colleagues or your employer, which might later come back to haunt you later or cause you to lose your job. Personally speaking, I would prefer no one say anything about his work on social media platforms be it Facebook or any micro-blogging facilities like Plurk or Twitter. After all, there is no reason to take the risk that Facebook won’t make certain changes which have the drastic effects of exposing stuff previously hidden from certain groups or individuals.
| 1. Click on “Account” on top right corner in Facebook, then select ‘Edit Friends’. This will load the ‘Friend Page’. |  |
|
|
|
| 2. The ‘Friend Page’ is where Facebook recommend people to add as friends (usually friends of other friends), or where you can search the address books of Yahoo, Windows Live Mail etc for friends. Any list created will be on the left sidebar on the ‘Friends Page’. A truncated example of mine show here. |  |
|
|
|
| 3. Assuming there were no list already created, click ‘Friends’ on the left sidebar to have all your friends listed. ‘Friends’ is the first item under ‘Lists’ on the left sidebar. When the browser finish loading the first page of friends, the following will appear on the top of the list (see below.)
Click |
|
|
|
|
| 4. A small window appears inside your browser. Give your list a name and select the contacts for this list and click ‘Create List’ when done. |  |
|
|
|
| 5. The name of the list just created will appear on the sidebar. Click it to list check who are listed. Beside the names of contacts in the list, it will also indicate how many other list they are already in. |  |
|
|
|
| 6. Having create all the lists required, click Home on the top right corner to return your feeds page. Then click in the box for add links or to input the status. Immediately below the input box, a set of icons will appear on the left, and small ‘Lock’ icon and the ‘Share’ button will appear on the right.
|
|
|
|
|
| 7. To shows default privacy settings, mouse over ‘Lock’ icon. |  |
|
|
|
| 8. Click on ‘Lock’ icon and select ‘Custom’ to edit settings |
 |
|
|
|
| 9. Example: This is what I do if this wall posting should only be visible to the list named ‘Premier Soccer’ but hidden from ‘Island Paradise’. Do not that you do not have to type the full name of the list. Facebook will suggest it as you type in more letters.
To hide from a list is to explicitly deny it from viewing this particular wall post. Click ‘Save Setting’ when you are done on who can and cannot view this wall posting. |
 |
|
|
|
| 10. To confirm list visibility before posting, mouse over ‘Lock’ icon again. Click ‘Share’ after you are sure this is what you intended. |  |
|
|
|
| 11. To identify the a wall post’s visibility setting after it has been posted, look at the information displayed under it.
The example on the right shows the information displayed beneath a wall post visible to everyone. (Note: No ‘Lock’ icon at all!) |
 |
| The example below shows the information of a wall post with visibility settings. Mouse over the lock to show visibility settings.(Note: Except indicate the list which this particular wall post is hidden from.)
|
|
to proceed with creating a new list.
Here’s a crazy idea that I thought up when discussing the above matter with a friend. Assuming that your girlfriend does not like you partying with a group of friends, you can now create a list for your girlfriend and mutual friends, and one for the partying gang. In your Facebook profile, you can then still share photos and comments with your otherwise ‘not approved’ activities with your partying gang without your girlfriend knowing.
Isn’t that cool?