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Facebook feature steps on Twitter's toes

Kathryn McConnachie
By Kathryn McConnachie, Digital Media Editor at ITWeb.
Johannesburg, 12 Mar 2012

Facebook is inching further into Twitter's territory of information filtering and curation, following last week's announcement of the social giant's new feature Interest Lists.

According to Facebook, interest lists will help users turn their news feed into a personalised newspaper based on chosen topics. Users can select general news topics such as business or sports, while also narrowing their selection to more specific interests such as tech news, environmental causes, art critics, photography or recipes (among many others).

Not dissimilar to Twitter lists, the new Facebook feature makes use of the “Subscribe” button that was introduced by the social network in September last year. As such, the interest lists include public figures and pages that are related to specific topics.

A potential drawback of the new feature, however, is that it cannot be guaranteed that people and pages included in a list will always post content on that specific topic, as all of their public posts will be pushed through the list. But Facebook maintains the new feature will help tidy up users' news feeds and streamline their experience.

Facebook software engineer Eric Faller says: “The top stories from each interest appear in your news feed so you can scan interesting headlines or click through to read more posts.”

Users can choose predefined interest lists to follow, or create their own lists which can be kept private or made public for others to follow.

Facebook will roll out interest lists to all users in the coming weeks, and it will appear as an “Add Interests” link in the bookmarks on the left-hand side of a user's Facebook page.

The latest update to the Facebook interface marks yet another move by the social giant to place itself at the core of users' online experience, as the network aims to become a one-stop shop for all online activities.

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