Facebook INTERESTS LISTS

Facebook has introduced interests lists so users can filter their News Feed by topics.

Perhaps, as another response to Twitter, which is offering a similar list capability, Facebook announced that users will be able to group pages and public figures into “interest lists” to help organize news feeds by topic.

Facebook users have long been able to create lists to organize their friends, but there hasn’t been an option to group pages until now.

Facebook users will see an “Add Interests” link by clicking the down-arrow, next to the “message” option, underneath the Brand page’s cover image. From there, you will be able to subscribe to lists from other users or create your own.

Interest lists can include pages, subscriptions and friends. The top stories from each interest will appear in News Feed with a link to read more posts.

When users view a list, it appears as a filtered version of News Feed, similar to how people view individual friend lists.

The difference is that users can share and subscribe to each other’s interest lists if they make them available to friends or the public.

Users can also create private lists that only they can see.

There are additional controls for users to select what type of stories to include or exclude in the feed. For example, you can select to see only photos from a page or only music and videos from a public figure.

This additional feature will no doubt change how people view and interact with stories from brand pages and may make it harder for Brand’s to measure their direct social proof. Particularly, as it means users don’t have to “Like” Brand pages in order to see updates from them.

This ultimately means those Brands who actively engage with their audience will be rewarded. Brands will need to be more interactive and innovative especially when it comes to thinking about how advertisements will be targeted depending whether a user “Likes” a page or subscribes to it.

In 2010, Facebook said only 5 percent of users created friend lists, which launched in 2007. With the ability to subscribe to interest lists created by others, however, more users might adopt the feature.

What do you think?

Will you use the Interest List to organize your “Liked” Brand Pages?