You hang out in different social circles – friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances to name a few. Or you may have a trusted and not-so-trusted circle – Facebook friends you know and trust, and others you’re not really sure about. You don’t always want to share with everyone. Your mom doesn’t need to know about that wild night out you had with your friends, and you probably don’t want to announce to mere acquaintances that you’re going to be on vacation and away from your home for the next two weeks.

The solution? Create a separate friend list for each of your social circles.

With separate lists, you can share information selectively. Here, I explain how to do it. (Note: you can also use these techniques to share with or hide information from individual friends.)

Create a Friend List

To create a friend list and assign some friends to it, here’s what you do:

1. Click Account -> Edit Friends.



2. Click + Create a List.



3. Click in the Enter a name box and type a name for the list, such as Family, Trusted Friends, or Acquaintances.



4. Click each friend you want to include in this list. (If you click a friend by mistake, click the friend again to deselect her.)
   Tip: If your friend list is really long and difficult to scroll through, you can type each friend’s name and select friends that way instead.
5. Click Create List. Facebook creates the list and displays it in the left column.

Edit or Delete a Friend List

You can edit or delete a friend list at any time:

1. Click Account -> Edit Friends.



2. Click the friend list you want to edit.
3. Click X next to a friend’s name to remove him from the list.
4. Click the + next to a friend’s name to add her to the list.
5. To delete the friend list, click Delete List.

Note: Although you can’t recover a deleted list, you can re-create it.

Adjust Your Share Settings

Once you have one or more friend lists, you can use them to selectively share information via your Facebook Privacy Settings. Here’s how:

1. Click Account -> Privacy Settings.



2. Click Customize Settings.



3. Click the button next to the item whose share settings you want to change and click Customize or edit.



4. Open the These people list and click Specific People…



5. Click in the box below the These people list and start typing the name of the desired friend list. As you type, Facebook displays the names of friends and lists that match what you typed so far.



6. When the desired friend list appears, click it.
7. Alternatively, you can choose to hide information from friends on a certain list.
8. Click Save Setting.

Selectively Share Status Updates

If, in your Privacy Settings, you choose to share “Posts by me” with everyone or a large group of people, you can still choose to share status updates and other items with certain friends or individuals on a specific friend list. Here’s what you do to selectively share a status update:

1. Compose the status update as you normally would.



2. Click the button with the lock on it and click Customize.
3. Open the These people list and click Specific People…



4. Click in the box below the These people list and start typing the name of the desired friend list. As you type, Facebook displays the names of friends and lists that match what you typed so far.



5. When the desired friend list appears, click it.
6. Alternatively, you can choose to hide information from friends on a certain list.
7. Click Save Setting.
8. Click Share.

Tip: You can do this with other stuff you share on Facebook, too. For example, to share a photo album with only those people on a certain friend list:

1. Open the photo album as you normally would.
2. Click Edit Album.
3. Open the Privacy list and click Customize.
4. Open the These people list and click Specific People…
5. Click in the box below the These people list and start typing the name of the desired friend list. As you type, Facebook displays the names of friends and lists that match what you typed so far.
6. When the desired friend list appears, click it.
7. Alternatively, you can choose to hide information from friends on a certain list.
8. Click Save Setting.

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If you’re wondering what day of the week is best to post to Facebook, when time to post, and how often to post (among other things), this infographic may be of interest to you and/or your business (courtesy of Dan Zarrella, a fella who calls himself an “award-winning social, search, and viral marketing scientist”):

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If you’e wondering why Joe Kraynak and I chose to write The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook (and why our publisher thought it was a good idea), check out this infographic courtesy of SocialHype.com:

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It’s been a good week in FarmVille. Your friends helped you build a horse stable and a larger chicken coop, you joined a co-op and now you’re rushing to plant a field with strawberries because — like they say — “everything grows in FarmVille,” even if it is mid-October.

But there are storm clouds on the horizon for users of this real-time simulation game developed by Zynga and available as an game on Facebook. The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that popular applications (also known as “apps”) and games like FarmVille have been transmitting players’ names — and even their friends’ names — to advertisers and outside companies.

The WSJ story said the top 10 most popular applications have been transmitting personal information about users to internet tracking companies. Worse yet, some have been forwarding a user’s “friends” list to these advertisers. Facebook’s 500 million-plus users all have access to such games and the Journal said this privacy issue affects millions of them who sign up for such online activities. And apparently no one is safe from such disclosure, the WSJ says, even those who go out of their way to set their Facebook settings at the highest privacy level.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has been under fire for the occasional security breach for users’ information. The company was quick to announce Sunday that it is taking steps to limit the exposure of such personal information. Facebook said it was introducing new technology to curtail the problem.

What is being transmitted, according to the Journal article, is the Facebook ID number that is assigned to every user on the site. And since these IDs are a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up someone else’s name — even the names of those who are careful enough to set their Facebook information at the highest privacy levels. For those less concerned about their privacy, the ID provides such details as place of residence, job title, age, gender and even photos.

A Facebook spokesman told the paper that user ID “may be inadvertently shared by a user’s Internet browser or by an application,” adding that knowledge of an ID “does not permit access to anyone’s private information on Facebook.”

When you sign up to use a app or for a game such as Zynga’s FarmVille, they are asked to complete a “Request for Permission” form, which seeks access to your basic information including name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information you might have shared with everyone. Once you hit the “allow” button, you could be sharing that information with up to two dozen advertising and data companies, several of which reportedly build profiles of users based on their online activities.

Facebook says it doesn’t allow the 550,000 developers of apps on its site to transfer data about its users to outside companies, even if a Facebook user agrees to this transfer. But the Journal’s findings demonstrate the challenge of policing those rules for the 550,000 apps in use on its site.

The Journal’s findings are the latest challenge for Facebook, which has been criticized in recent years for modifying its privacy rules to expose more of a user’s information. The company says it has disabled thousands of applications at various times for violating its policies. But what’s not known is how many, if any, of those cases involved passing user information to marketing companies.

This past spring, WSJ found that Facebook was transmitting the ID numbers to advertising companies, under some circumstances, when a user clicked on an ad. Facebook subsequently discontinued the practice.

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One of the best uses of Facebook is to rekindle long-forgotten friendships and restore family bonds. Today, I noticed a story on FoxNews.com entitled “Facebook Reunites Houston Father and Daughter After 25 Years,” about a daughter who found her father on Facebook after searching fruitlessly for 12 years.

I love stories like this – about how people use Facebook as a conduit for face-to-face relationships. If you have a story like this, please share by posting it here.

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Facebook will be hosting a special news event at 5:00 p.m. 5:15 p.m. PT today. During the event, Facebook representatives will provide an update on many of the service’s features and products. You can watch the event live via the player below or by visiting the Event tab for Facebook Live:

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Want to know what Joe and I sound like? Here’s your chance. We were interviewed earlier this week by Connie Bennett, host of Gab with the Gurus on BlogTalkRadio.com. Here, Joe and I discuss the most compelling reasons for using Facebook, Facebook’s privacy settings, how to promote your business on Facebook, and more.

Have a listen by clicking the play arrow below, and then be sure to let us know what you think.

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Facebook is more than the largest digital hangout on the planet. It’s a thread in the social fabric of our culture or, as some might say, a tear in the social fabric of our culture. Whatever the case, Facebook has become a social phenomenon, complete with scandals or at least alleged scandals that typically accompany American celebrity and success. (In the United States, we love success almost as much as we love to witness the demise of the most successful.)

Facebook’s phenomenal success was destined to draw its own mob of detractors poised to criticize it and its founders and profit in doing so. One of the first and most successful so far is Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls it fiction, and there’s probably plenty of that in the book, too. I don’t know. I haven’t read it. I’ve been spending too much time on Facebook. Besides, I always like to see the movie first, so I won’t be disappointed in the movie because the book was so much better.

Fortunately, the movie version, The Social Network, is scheduled for release in theaters in October of this year. I think I’ll wait until it comes out on DVD, but if you’re interested, here’s the trailer.

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I recently received a Facebook message from Abnoos Moslehi, a translator in Iran who has read Bipolar Disorder For Dummies, which I co-authored with Dr. Candida Fink. Abnoos wants to translate the book into Farsi. Following is her letter of introduction, posted with her permission:

Dear Mr. Kraynak,

I was once diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder II, in Iran, my home country, where there was and is no information resource on this disorder.

I am not sure where I first saw your book , but it was the first real/complete thing I read about my condition and it has been helping me a lot.

Due to lack of information in this field I have been thinking of translating this book into Farsi and somehow hopefully get it published in Iran. It is a huge task and being a BP, I can’t tell you whether it’s one of those highs or not!

Iran doesn’t follow the Copy Right law and basically it is OK to translate anything from anyone and publish it without their permission. However I’d like to make sure that this is OK for you, it really does matter to me that if I get it on the market, it should be decent by all means.

Thank you for your time,

Abnoos

Abnoos found me on Facebook via the Bipolar Disorder For Dummies Facebook Page, which I set up and co-host with Dr. Fink.

As Mikal and I explain in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook, Facebook is a powerful tool for connecting with friends and family. But we also explain how to use Facebook as a business tool for marketing and for pursuing potentially rewarding and profitable opportunities.

Were it not for that bipolar disorder Facebook page and my own presence on Facebook, I would probably never have had the opportunity to “meet” Abnoos and be able to assist her in her efforts to get my book published in Farsi.

Facebook helps to facilitate global connections and make things happen. Of course, ultimately the driving force is comprised of the individuals who make it happen, but technology often provides the introductions and infrastructure necessary get people connected and support their collaborative efforts.

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