Facebook claims that the new attribute transforms your News Feed “into your own personalized newspaper” with special sections (feeds) for topics that matters you most. Interest Lists will launch “in the coming weeks.”
In fact– “Interests boasts public figures and Pages relevant to a particular topic, and are put together by people like you,” Facebook said in a post on its website.
For instance, users who wish to continue with the 2012 presidential candidates can subscribe to a list of updates from the candidates themselves, and the political news sources that follow them, such as MSNBC, CNN, and Fox.
The social media giant will then add an “Add Interests” link in your left-hand bookmarks. Which will appear in user lists within the next couple of weeks, according to Facebook. When you click it, you can subscribe to lists on almost any topic. The top stories from each interest appear in your newsfeed so you can screen interesting headlines or click through to read more posts, Facebook said.
In addition, from a drop-down menu beneath the cover photo on Pages that switched to Timeline as well as on profiles belonging to subscribers who have Timeline, users will be able to click on “Add to Interests Lists.” Users can create their own Lists, and share them, or just keep them private. And like the Subscribe feature, users can also take Lists curated by other users and adopt them as their own. In that sense, the Facebook Lists are similar to Twitter Lists, which allow users to follow a curated list of sources on, say, the New York Yankees.
“Interest lists can help you turn Facebook into your own personalized newspaper, with special sections–or feeds–for topics that matter to you. You can find traditional news sections like Business, Sports and Style or get much more personalized–like Tech News, NBA Players, and Art Critics,” Eric Faller, a Facebook software engineer, wrote in a blog post.
However, creating a list is almost identical to creating a photo album on Facebook, with a wizard taking users through steps where they choose their friends, “Liked” pages and subscriptions, as well as the people and pages that Facebook recommends. As soon as you create your first list, an “Interests” tab will appear in the left hand column of your Facebook landing page. Your lists will be stored in this tab.
Faller also mentioned that Lists could also be employed to “tidy up your experience on Facebook,” presumably providing another separation between the people you are personally interested in, such as friends and family, and those that offer insight and other content on topics that are interesting but not intimate. Separating that content will also tidy up a user’s Timeline.
Moreover, Facebook also recently announced Messenger, an app that places a small window on your Windows or Mac desktop, and empowers you to chat with friends without needing to visit the Facebook page.
As a matter of fact, the move revs up Facebook’s rivalry with Twitter, which boasts a similar Lists feature of its own. Lists on Twitter allow people to organize their contacts into groups, so they can view a Twitter stream for a particular topic, event or group of people.