RIP Facebook interest lists

Photo: KMW2700 (CC)

A moment of holiday silence for Facebook interest lists.

I told you about them almost 5 years ago, how they’re a great way to do competitor research. Sadly, they’re on their way out.

Any Facebook user could build a list, public or private, of people and pages to see all their updates in one stream. For me, it’s a huge timesaver keeping up with close friends. It was also a fun way to show off Birmingham news updates and restaurants, letting users subscribe to the lists to see all that info in their streams.

No more.

Like other sites, Facebook adds and drops features all the time without warning. I noticed for months that the interest lists were quietly becoming less robust. Certainly no one I knew was using them.

I still have access to mine, though for how long only Mark Zuckerberg knows. And I still have my Twitter lists, but they never quite measured up to Facebook’s version thanks to Facebook’s size advantage.

As an alternate solution, Facebook users can still build Friend Lists, they just can’t be shared with others.

Sigh. Always tough to let go of power user features, but I look forward to what Facebook brings our way in 2017.

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