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Facebook Smart Lists: How it works

Image Credit: Facebook

Facebook have been creating lists for users and one of the lists that has started appearing recently is know as 'Smart Lists'. This is an automatic list, meaning Facebook populates this list for you. There are two main reasons why users create and maintain Facebook lists.

1. View updates from only people in that list -- say you have a list know as School Friends, you can always click on this list to see updates from the people on that list. So instead of browsing through your entire news feed for individual updates, you can click on the list and see all the updates from people belonging to that list.

2. Post status updates to only certain friends on Facebook -- so when you want to update only a certain group of friends, you can post a status update and from the drop-down choose only the group or list of people who you want to be seeing this post and replying to it. 

Facebook has taken the liberty to work for you by creating Smart Lists. Automatically populated by the Facebook algorithm, that works for you. Here are a few questions if you're wondering how this whole process happens.

How to activate Facebook Smart Lists
On your news feed you should see the Smart List introduction, also if you go to your other lists on Facebook, you should see the suggestion to create and maintain a smart list. You would need to click 'Okay' to get the list setup.

Who are the friends' that Facebook suggests for this list
Smart lists automatically update themselves with coworkers, classmates, local friends and family members based on your friends' profile info.

How to edit 'Smart Lists'
To do this you will need either go to your lists home by clicking on this link. Also once you're on your news feed you can click on 'More'  found when you hover over the 'Friends' link found on the left-hand sidebar. 

Is Smart List one complete list
No, smart lists are a group of lists that update themselves automatically. So smart lists will come with names like your School name, company name,  local friends - people who stay geographically close to you and family members. So when you see lists like this populating your list page - you now know what is happening. The lists currently are limited to Work, School, Family, City.

Let us know what you think about this new feature in the comments section below. You can also read more at the Facebook Blog.

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