The Korea Herald

지나쌤

Facebook to organize friends in 'smart lists'

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Published : Sept. 14, 2011 - 13:04

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NEW YORK (AP) _ It's a modern-day dilemma: You really want your Facebook friends to see that wild party photo of you wearing bunny ears. But you're not so keen on explaining it to your mother-in-law.

Well, Facebook aims to make life easier.

Beginning Wednesday, the social network will make it easier to share photos, posts and links with smaller, isolated groups of people. While the site has allowed users to separate their friends into lists since 2007, this option took quite a bit of work and only a small fraction of Facebook users took advantage of it. 

Now, Facebook will automatically group your friends based on whether they live near you, went to your school or work with you. You can read posts or share updates with specific groups instead of dozens, or hundreds, of ``friends'' at a time. Facebook will use the colleges, workplaces and geographic locations that users share on the site to organize people into groups. Called ``smart lists,'' the feature is optional to use, and the lists are customizable.

``Users don't really want to spend a lot of time creating and maintaining friend lists,'' said Naomi Gleit, the director of product at Facebook who worked on the feature.

In addition, you can create your own friend groups with as few or as many as you would like, based around hobbies, work projects or relatives, for example.

Listing people as ``close friends,'' meanwhile, will ensure that you will see the posts and photos from the dozen or so friends you care about the most. Updates from these people will feature more prominently in your news feed and you can opt to receive email notifications every time they post something on Facebook, Gleit said.

Conversely, those categorized as ``acquaintances'' will feature less prominently on your Facebook page, and you will see just big news, such as marriages and new babies.

Facebook's latest move takes a page from Google Plus, the fledgling social network launched this summer by the online search leader. Google's service so far has not threatened to unseat Facebook as the world's biggest online social network. But its sleek design and innovative, privacy-focused features piqued the interest of many Facebook users and critics, helping to foster healthy competition among these Silicon Valley neighbors.

 

<한글 기사>

페이스북,  '친구' 자동분류 기능 추가

소셜네트워킹서비스(SMS) 페이스북은 13일(현지시간) '친구'를 자동 분류해 주는 '스마트 리스트' 기능을 14일부터 추가한다고 밝혔다.

스마트 리스트는 페이스북 이용자가 사전 동의하에 제공한 정보에 근거해 '친구'를 직장과 학교, 가족, 도시 등 4개 기본 항목으로 자동 분류•관리해 주는 서비스 다.

기본 항목 외에 취미나 프로젝트 등 자신이 원하는 새로운 친구 카테고리도 자유롭게 만들 수 있다.

친구를 카테고리 별로 묶는 기능은 전에도 있었지만 스마트 리스트는 자동적으로 친구를 분류, 이용자가 일일이 작업을 해야 하는 번거로움 없이도 사진과 새소식 등을 효율적으로 공유할 수 있도록 도와준다고 회사는 설명했다.

페이스북은 또 친구를 보다 '절친한 사이'와 단순 '지인'으로 구분해 새소식 노출의 우선순위를 달리할 수 있도록 하는 기능도 추가했다.

스마트 리스트 개발을 이끈 네이오미 글라이트는 "이용자들이 친구 리스트를 만 들고 관리하는 데 많은 시간을 할애하길 원치 않는다"고 새 기능을 추가하게 된 배경을 전했다. 

IT업계는 페이스북의 새 기능이 구글의 SMS '구글 플러스' 출범에 영향을 받은 것으로 평가했다. (연합뉴스)