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Facebook Lists: Site reveals new feature designed to make people share more personal information

Its launch represents the firm's latest attempt to get people to post more personal information to the site

Aatif Sulleyman
Wednesday 14 February 2018 13:02 GMT
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Facebook has added a brand new feature to the Status Updates box, which lets you post lists to the site.

It’s a significant update, which is designed to encourage users to publish more personal updates.

Your list can be about anything – your schedule for the day, places you would like to visit or New Year’s resolutions, for instance.

You can also customise it with an emoji and background colour, to make it stand out in the News Feed.

Lists has just started rolling out to users, and it should appear as an option when you tap the Status Updates box on the Facebook app.

However, you can currently only post lists through the Android version of the Facebook app, TechCrunch reports. iOS users only have the ability to view other people’s lists right now.

The launch of Lists represents Facebook’s latest attempt to get people to post more personal updates to the site, and engage with more content.

It added a feature called Did You Know to the Status Updates box in December, which asks you to answer a series of questions about yourself.

(TechCrunch

However, with the rollout of Lists, Facebook is running the risk of people flooding the News Feed with dull or annoying updates that turn people off the site.

It isn’t clear if there will be a limit to how many entries a list can have, but only the top five will appear by default, with others hidden in a dropdown menu.

The company recently admitted that social media can be bad for you, but said it all comes down to how you use it.

“On social media, you can passively scroll through posts, much like watching TV, or actively interact with friends — messaging and commenting on each other’s posts,” the company wrote.

“Just like in person, interacting with people you care about can be beneficial, while simply watching others from the sidelines may make you feel worse.”

It is, therefore, making major changes to the News Feed, which will result in people seeing more posts from the people users actually know, and fewer from news organisations and celebrities they follow.

The tweaks are largely designed to encourage people to interact with more content on the site and share more information about themselves, which Facebook will be able to use to sell more ads.

Earlier this week, eMarketer released a report predicting that two million young people will stop using Facebook this year, and instead turn towards Snapchat and Instagram.

“Facebook may have been central to defining the social media category, and it still has many uses. But younger consumers in particular are looking for something beyond utility,” it said.

“They want novelty and exclusivity too; the search for the latest buzz in social media will continue to lead them away from Facebook.”

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