Facebook is practically about anything imaginable, from people sharing photos to videos, GIFs, stickers and many others.
When things seem to can't go any fancier after the social giant allows users to create status posts with gradient background, Facebook starts allowing users to create lists, complete with number or bullet-point form to their status.
Rolling out gradually to all users, the 'Lists' feature is Facebook's way to make its social network a bit more personal: it wants people to share more about themselves.
The feature, like it sounds, allows users make lists of anything they choose - New Year’s Resolutions, To Do’s, restaurants to try, travel ideas, and more. Users can also create their own lists and decorate them with emoji.
Lists are also designed with the idea that friends could copy each other’s lists to share their own opinions about the subject at hand.
This feature, however comes a bit at the wrong time.
People have questioned how a company can dive too deep inside people's lives. And this feature can be a problem to those that concern privacy because it allows Facebook to know a lot more about its users, theoretically providing the company a wealth of easy data about users' interests that advertisers could use.
But according to Facebook’s Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed, the feature was simply a response to use cases he was already seeing.
Actually we built lists because we saw lots of people Creating lists as long statuses and with pictures, and thought it would be good to make it easier for people to create lists first class. I hope we can get to a point, someday, where you don't always assume ill intent.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 13, 2018
Creating a list can be a great way to ask people's opinion. Indeed and also a great way for Facebook to learn more about its users.
Recently, Facebook has been tweaking its News Feed algorithm to show more posts from users’ friends and family, and fewer from brands and publishers. But one problem with that strategy is that people have been posting less personal content over the years.
As long as the company can honestly move away from being a source of online news, which has garnered a lot of attention due to its platform spreading fake news, creating lists won't be the most pressing issue Facebook has to deal with.
But whatever Facebook's motivations are, people will use this a lot.
