Facebook Rolls Out Friend Lists in Chat
Here goes Facebook again rolling out a new feature that I’m afraid some of you may not like. Although according to the Facebook blog, many have asked for this feature to better organize connections and to control which of your Facebook friends see you online. We’re talking about Friend List in Facebook Chat. Friend List in Chat lets you easily organize your group of friends and view information to specific sets of people. If you’ve been using Facebook’s Friend List feature in other parts of Facebook, you may be aware that it lets you fitler your home page, send inbox messages and manage your privacy settings.
To use this feature, click on the Chat icon at the bottom right corner of your Facebook home page. You’d be asked which of your Friend List you’d like to be displayed in the chat pane. That is of course, if you have already created a Friend List before.
You can also create new a New Friend list from the Chat Pane. Simply enter a name for that Friend List and drag friends you want to be included on the list.
If you want certain group of Facebook contacts not to appear on your Chat Pane, simply uncheck that list. And to view your Facebook contacts alphabetically, just simply uncheck all the Friend Lists.
Now, here’s an interesting feature (which some of you may not like). In the Chat Pane, you’d notice green switches opposite the Friend List name. Clicking on that green switch will turn off that Friend List. Meaning, your friends in that list will see your status as offline, even though you will appear online in your other Friend List.
So, if you don’t want your co-workers know that you are in Facebook at certain time of the day, say during office hours but you still want to connect with your other friends, then this feature will be very useful.
