As the popularity of Facebook grows, you may find your ever-expanding friends list becoming more difficult to manage. Creating smaller lists within Facebook is an effective tool for keeping track of friends and deciding which Facebook friends should see selected information in a user profile or news feed.

When you have a relatively small Facebook friend list (20-30 people), keeping track of your friends isn’t much of a challenge. As your Facebook friends list becomes populated with family members, work colleagues, and people you haven’t seen since high school, managing your friends list—and managing what profile and news feed information they can see—can get confusing. Therefore, you should organize your Facebook friends into smaller lists identified by keywords.

At the top of your Facebook home page, you should see a “Friends” tab. Click on this tab and then click on “Friends” under “Lists” on the left-hand side of the page. You should now be able to see the full list of your Facebook friends.

Atop your list of friends, you should see a button labeled “Create New List.” When you click on this button, a box will appear and you will be able to name your list and populate it by clicking on the pictures of Facebook friends you would like to include in that particular list. For example, you could create a group titled “College Friends,” and populate that group by clicking on the pictures of the college friends you would like to appear in this group. When you’ve finished adding everyone you would like to add to a group, click “Create List.” Repeat these steps for as many different groups as you would like to create.

You can also list a friend in multiple groups. For example, you want to create a group called “girlfriends.” Many of your college friends, you still consider your girlfriends and so you want them in the “girlfriends” group. Simply create the “girlfriends” group and click on the photos of the Facebook friends you want to appear in this group—now you will have some friends who appear in both the “girlfriends” and “college friend” groups.

While separating your Facebook friends into groups can make such functions as email easier, you can also use your privacy settings to control what friend groups see selected information in your profile and on their news feeds. Back on your Facebook home page, click on “Settings” at the top of the page. You will be given the option to click on “Privacy Settings” and then you will be able to click on “Profile” (to control what information is available to people from your profile). Each option on this page has an “Edit Custom Settings” link that will allow you to type in the name of a friends list if you have information that you would have them rather not see (For example: your status updates might amuse your friends but would offend your family. So then you would block your family list from being able to see your status and updates).

Managing your friends and family on Facebook doesn’t have to be an ordeal. Organize your friends and family into small, manageable lists, and communicating with those near and far via Facebook can be a breeze.