Facebook Introduces Interest Lists

Facebook has quietly begun testing a new feature called interest lists. Similar to what you can find on Twitter, users will be able to bucket different pages and profiles into separate lists, such as a “Social Media” or “Places I Love.” Taking a capability from Google+, Facebook is also offering users predefined lists of pages and profiles that they’ve already taken the courtesy of compiling together. Once a user selects these lists, they’ll be able to see these posts in their news feed, a capability that Google+ has offered since it was released to the public, and which undoubtedly fuels further competition for Google+ as it vies to differentiate itself.

Facebook has begun testing the feature with users, and I was able to score a test yesterday. I received a notification on my homepage telling me I could now add interests to my news feed, and asked me to select or search for interests I wanted to start following.

Users can also add a page to an interest list by clicking on the * after message on the new Timeline page profiles. This drops down to a “Add to interests” selection, where users are then prompted to add it to a list.

A user can name the list anything they want and choose who they want to have see the list. Once they are done, they can view their list in their news feed:

Needless to say, an interesting new offering from Facebook, and a great way for businesses to reach the people who are engaged with their brands and actually want to see the content they’re promoting.

-Bryan Nagy