Facebook Suggests People for the Acquaintances List, So You Can See Less of Them

For the longest of times, Facebook would bundle all of your contacts as "friends" and be done with it. Granted, it still does that now, but it is taking steps to better separate the different types of contacts in your friends list.

A few months ago, it introduced the Acquaintances list. The name is self-explanatory but the feature didn't really mean much as it still asked users to manually add people to the list.

Now though, Facebook is taking some steps in automating the process with suggestions for the Acquaintances list.

The site uses an algorithm to determine the people you interact with the less and suggests you add them to the list. Doing so will add fewer updates from these people to your News Feed.

"Last fall we introduced the Close Friends and Acquaintances lists to help you see more posts in news feed from your close friends, and fewer from acquaintances you don’t know as well," Facebook explained.

"Today we’re announcing a tool to make it easier to add friends to your Acquaintances list," it announced.

"When you add friends to your Acquaintances list they won’t be unfriended or notified. You’ll just see fewer of their posts in news feed," it added.

Facebook already uses an algorithm to figure out which updates to show you and the people you interact with more will be favored. But like any computerized method, the algorithm can fail, input from you can be very important.

In practice though, it doesn't seem like the new feature will get much use. Users have to go to the Friends page and select the Acquaintances list before seeing the suggestions.

If they're doing that, they were probably going to add some people manually anyway. Users who don't already know about the list will have a hard time finding out about the suggestions, unless Facebook starts placing them on the main page.