Chris Peterson

Title says it all. Via Facebook Blog:

Lists have existed for several years, but you’ve told us how time-consuming it is to organize lists for different parts of your life and keep them up to date.

To make lists incredibly easy and even more useful, we’re announcing three improvements:

• Smart lists – You’ll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you–like your work, school, family and city.

• Close Friends and Acquaintances lists – You can see your best friends’ photos and posts in one place, and see less from people you’re not as close to.
• Better suggestions – You can add the right friends to your lists without a lot of effort.

And so on and so forth. Not a lot of commentary from me here – we’ll have to see how it rolls out. But I spent enough time criticizing Facebook: it’s only fair to note when they are at least trying to do something right.

I remember when Friends Lists were launched. It was early March 2008, and I was out at Facebook visiting a developer friend. Their launch inspired my thesis. Three years later they are finally being put to the purpose I hoped they would.

It’s not perfect, even if implemented as Facebook has described. But it’s a start.