Facebook is quickly becoming the social network and I find myself adding 'friends' who may really only be business acquaintances or similar - basically contacts who don't need to see everything my real friends would see.  Facebook has a convenient way of restricting content using lists and privacy settings.

Here is a short tutorial on how to use the Privacy Settings and Lists to control and manage your privacy on Facebook.

Lists

Facebook allows you to assign a List to each of your 'friends' e.g. you could have lists for: Friends, Family, Business Associates etc and a contact can be assigned more than one list.

Create a new List

1. To create a new list, click on Account > Edit Friends

On the Edit Friends page click on the Friends link on the left-side menu:

This will display a list of all your friends on Facebook. Above the list is a link to create a new list:

2. Click on this link and once you've created a new list it will appear on the left-side menu; I created one called Business Associates:

Click on your new List and the following page will appear asking you to add friends to the list:

3. Click on the Add friends to list.... link to populate the list.

Now let's have a look at the Privacy Settings for this new List...

Privacy Settings

4. To go to your privacy settings click on My Account > Privacy Settings

This will display the Privacy Settings page

5. Click on the Customize settings link

6. Click on the 'lock' button to edit the settings for each area and select Customize

7. This will pop-up the Custom Privacy window. In the These people drop-down menu, select Specific People and this will give you a field into which you can enter the name of the new list. Click on Save Setting when you've finished adding one or more lists to either or both visibility options.

That's it! You're now controlling who sees what using the power of Facebook lists.