14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is continuing to expand its core product and more into Twitter's territory. Spurred by Google+ or not, it seems that Facebook is beginning to realize the power of asynchronous relationships. It is now introducing Interest Lists, which are very much like Twitter lists.
Interest Lists enable users to subscribe to several pages or people that have been grouped together based on various criteria.
The idea is simple, just click one subscribe button, to a list that may be interesting to you, and you get updates to all of the pages on the list, which should all be relevant to the topic, rather than having to hunt down and subscribe to them one by one.
"Interest lists [are] a whole new way to keep up with stuff you care about and tidy up your experience on Facebook," Facebook explained.
"Interest lists can help you turn Facebook into your own personalized newspaper, with special sections—or feeds—for topics that matter to you. You can find traditional news sections like Business, Sports and Style or get much more personalized—like Tech News, NBA Players, and Art Critics," it added.
Users can already create friend lists, to keep their friends grouped together, but Interest Lists are aimed at public figures and pages, though you can add anyone to them.
Anyone can create or edit an Interest List to subscribe to. The nice part, an obvious one, is that you can share any list you've created or subscribed to so that your friends can subscribe to it as well.
The difference between Interest Lists and friends lists is in the name, Interest Lists are for people that you aren't necessarily friends with, public figures and so on, or for brand pages.
Facebook is still new to this sort of use, while Pages have been around for years, Twitter is still the preferred way for celebrities and companies alike to interact with their fans/customers and so on.