How I Set Up Facebook Lists

I’m not a fan of Facebook’s News Feed and Pages Feed, which have their own ways of delivering content to you. I prefer to see the content I want to see and I want to see it chronologically!

So, I set up lists.

To set up Friends Lists …

  1. Go to facebook.com/bookmarks/lists to set up lists of Friends, either using the predefined lists or by creating your own.
  2. Go to each individual custom list page to add Friends in the “Add friends to this list” box. You can also scroll over the Friends button (for that particular Friend) and click on “Add to another list” in the dropdown menu, which is what I do each time I add a new Friend.

To set up Interests Lists …

  1. Go facebook.com/bookmarks/interests and create lists for Pages (I have “UMC Pages,” “Leadership,” etc.).
  2. Go to each individual Interest page to add Pages in the “Add to this list” box.

You can also add multiple Friends or Pages at a time by clicking on “See All” next to “On This List” at the top of the right hand sidebar on each page, and then choose Friends or Pages from the dropdown menu. It also looks like you can intermingle Friends and Pages now; I’m not sure that was doable when I first created my lists.

Next, I add the lists to my Favorites and arrange them in the order I want in the Facebook menu by clicking on the gear icon beside the list name.

That’s it. When I go to Facebook, I go through my lists and avoid the News Feed and Pages Feed, altogether. All posts appear chronologically, not just the ones Facebook wants me to see. That’s the good news. The bad news is you see everything so you still have to be intentional to make the best use of your time. It’s just that I want to be in control of what I see, and not rely on Facebook to do it for me!

One other nice thing about lists is that you can direct a post to a specific list of Friends. For example, if I want to limit a post to my Centre Grove Church Friends or my Susquehanna Conference Friends, I can do so.

Of course, this will need to be adapted if or when Facebook in the future. But, I hope this helps. It may sound more complicated than it really is. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you have other ways for managing your Facebook feeds!

Add a Comment