HOW TO: Keep Your Facebook Updates Private

We’ve already shared some of the basics about how to use Facebook’s privacy settings to keep your personal updates, well, personal. Now it’s time for some more advanced techniques using the newer features Facebook implemented only a couple of months ago.
If you have a lot of Facebook friends, you probably have some work friends, some family, and other groups in the mix. You don’t want to block any of them out completely, but sometimes you want to share some info with one group but not with the other.

Previously, we showed you how to set privacy rules for each list, but Facebook () recently added the ability to make each individual post or status update visible only to the people you want. Here we’ll show you how to use that feature in tandem with friends lists to get the most out of Facebook without worrying about stepping on any toes or sharing information with an unwanted audience. Maybe this HOW TO will even prevent you from getting fired!

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Step 1: Divide Your Friends Into Lists

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You might have done this already — if you have, you can skip to Step 2 — but we want to make sure we explain everything here. Facebook lets you sort your friends into lists. Before the new privacy features went live, that was just for helping you check in on the news feed updates for people you were interested in without the clutter of people you weren’t. But now you can show some profile info and updates to some lists and not to others, so it’s doubly functional.To create a list, just click on “Account” at the top right of the Facebook interface and select “Edit Friends” from the drop-down menu that appears, as pictured below. You’ll be taken to the advanced friends page, and at the top there will be a button labeled “Create New List” — that’s pictured in our header image above.

Note that even if your co-workers or another group you want to hide your update from are part of a network, you can’t block out a network, so you’ll still have to create a list. It’s odd, because you can say that only a particular network can see your updates; you just can’t say only a particular network can’t. We’re not fans of this distinction.

Creating a list is easy, though. Just type in the names of the people you want to narrow down your options then click on a portrait to highlight it and add it. Once you have everyone you need, click “Create List” and you’re done!
Create lists for each group of people you want to reach. For example, we’re going to say we’re calling in sick to work in order to play volleyball with the volleyball team, so we have two lists — Volleyball Team and Work. We’ll target our status update to Volleyball Team but hide it from Work. Note that we’re not recommending faking sick days — we just thought it would be an amusing example!

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Step 2: Choose Who Can See Your Posts

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Here’s the real meat of it all: You can control exactly who sees each of your updates, whether they’re links, status updates, notes, or just about anything else.
When you’re about to post an update from either the Facebook home page news feed or your own wall, you’ll see a small lock icon below and to the right of the field. Click on this and you’ll be able to choose who to show this update to: Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, or Custom. We’re going to use Custom. The rest are self-explanatory.
We’re posting an update to invite our team to play volleyball with us at the lake since we called in sick for work, but we don’t want our co-workers to know that our sick day is a fake one. To accomplish that, we’ll select Custom and then choose exactly which lists or individuals can see the update.

Once you’ve clicked “Custom,” you’ll see a drop down menu that defaults to “Only Friends.” If that’s selected, only your friends will see the update, and you can type names in the bottom field to prevent specific individuals and lists from seeing the update. We could type “Work” in that field to add our Work list, and then all our friends except those in the Work list could see the update.
Or let’s say you’re about to take someone out on a date and it’s your turn to choose the venue, but you’re drawing a blank. If you’re Facebook friends with your date, you can send out an update to all the rest of your friends asking for advice on where to go, but make it so only your date can’t see the update and its comments by entering his or her name.
If you want to be more careful, you can specify that only a certain list or specific friends can see the update — that is, name the people who can see it rather than naming the people who can’t. To do that, click on the drop-down menu and select “Specific People.” You’ll see an interface like the one pictured above. This is where you choose who can see your update.
In the image above, we added the list “Volleyball Team” to the top field so only that list can see it. Anyone who’s not a part of that list will never see the update, including all our work friends — unless they’re part of the volleyball team, too!
You can use these techniques to target each update at exactly the people you want to read it without worrying about causing problems for others. It’s useful if you have friends from many different backgrounds. It’s one of our favorite features in Facebook, and we’d love to see it in more social websites.
If you have any questions or additional ideas about how to use Facebook’s advanced privacy features, let us know in the comments.