This plugin is extremely beneficial if you have more than one author on your blog but it’s also still good to have even if your blog only has one author. What it does is add in social media links to your Contact Info section in your user profile for popular social media sites such as Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

Once you fill in one or more of those fields, 16 x16 icons will appear next to your name when your name appears as the author of a blog post. This lets readers easily find your social media information as they read and is completely unique to each author.

Download the plugin here: authorsociallinks.zip

Disclaimer:

This plugin relies on your installation using the function the_author_posts_link to generate the author links. If you use a theme that uses it’s own author functions or a theme that uses get_author and get_author_link separately, this plugin might not work properly for your blog.

Install instructions:

Unzip the authorsociallinks.zip file
Upload the contents to your blog, place in the /wp-content/plugins/ folder
Login to your wordpress admin, go to Plugins and activate the Author Social Links plugin
Update your Contact Info to include your social media links

Screenshots:

Social Links

Contact Info

Google+ has taken the two and merged them into, what many people consider, the best combination for the ultimate solution.

But what exactly is it about the combination that makes it so perfect?

Influence

Most people have known for quite some time that the number of friends or followers you have truly means very little in the grand scheme of things, it’s the amount of influence you have over those people that truly matters.

Whether you are a marketer or just making a game out of it, you want to get the most shares, likes, retweets and mentions. Those are the numbers that truly matter.

Klout is certainly not the first person to point it out but they are the first to put it all into a formula that spits out a respectable # rank that accurately judges you based on that influence. That is to say, they ignore the number of friends/followers you have and judges you based on the responses you get to the content you provide.

What are the differences?

Google+ takes the best of both worlds by allowing you to include links, pictures, videos and more into a single post… not only that, it has no character limits (420 for Facebook, 140 for Twitter) and best of all, it allows anyone in the world to comment.

That’s influence.

With Facebook, you share a tidbit of info with a finite number of people… your friends.

With Twitter, you share with the world but you’re only sharing 140 characters of text. Maybe with a link squeezed in.

With Facebook, friends will see comments that other friends make… but that’s it.

With Twitter, you don’t see any comments at all! Unless the originator retweets or copies and pastes it.

With Google+, the world can follow you, the world can share your content with the rest of the world that is following them and all of those people in the world can comment.

Let’s take it one step further

Without the character limit, Google+ could quite literally begin to compete with WordPress… in fact, I am almost counting on it once they integrate Blogger (remember, that’s a Google product!)

Think about it… as it stands right now, bloggers write their content and then “share” a link to it on their social media profiles. Maybe a small description, maybe a thumbnail.

But with Google+… your social profile can be your blog!! You can write entire blog posts as status updates.

What’s the advantage in that? Well, many people would argue that having to get the person to click loses you a big % of readers right off the bat.

Not only that, but it also leaves a person wondering how to respond. Do they reply on your blog? Do they reply in your social media profile? Do they just click the Like button?

With Google+, they can read and reply in one place, no clicking involved.

And THAT… will drive up your Klout score in a huge way!! Well, once Klout starts tracking Google+ accounts anyway.

You’re about to be far more influential

Google+ is all about influence…. from the most popular people to every day hobbyists, people are getting more feedback on Google+ than they ever did on any other social network.

That’s huge. That’s what builds staying power.

Interaction is key to networking, interaction is key to communicating and interaction is key to influence.

Google+ has it in spades.

Google+, despite being very young, is already able to give you the top brass in at least 2 prominent web companies.

Google+ equals Google execs

Who would have ever thought that you could read the Google quarterly report directly from one of the co-founders himself? Earlier this week, people heard rumors that Google+ was at 10m users but it was confirmed by Larry Page right on Google+ itself, in his quarterly report. Not in press releases, not in an interview but in a Google+ post to the very users that were using it!

Even better, you get to comment on it, so that he’d read it! And that’s not all, you get both co-founders, you get the top execs, the engineers and more.

You get to report bugs and feature requests right to the key people in charge, and they answer you!

For a list of Google execs on Google+, go here: https://plus.google.com/103399926392582289066/posts/LX4g7577DqD

Mashable news at your finger tips

You know how Mashable on Twitter is just about the closest thing to be 100% influential there is? Think retweets. Just about every single tweet they make gets 100+ retweets.

Anyway, now you can bypass the social feed and go right to the top, or off to the side… as it were.

There’s an official Mashable News account on Google+ but if you want more than that, you can now get a nice big list of Mashable employees, even Pete Cashmore, the founder and CEO.

For a list of Mashable execs on Google+, go here: http://mashable.com/2011/07/15/mashable-google-plus

Facebook is doing their homework, you can ask them

Here’s a breakdown of the Facebook people currently on Google+ (yes, one social network using another, the horror!)

Founder/CEO
Mark Zuckerberg http://goo.gl/V2lwv

Executive Team
Christopher Cox (VP, Product) http://goo.gl/ddxcw
Lori Goler (VP, Human Resources & Recruiting) http://goo.gl/wMe3v
Dan Rose (VP, Partnerships & Platform Marketing) http://goo.gl/h1199
Sheryl Sandberg (Chief Operating Officer) http://goo.gl/uyz9p
Elliot Schrage (VP, Global Comm., Marketing & Public Policy)http://goo.gl/viVLv
Mike Schroepfer (VP, Engineering) http://goo.gl/YhSzH
Bret Taylor (Chief Technology Officer) http://goo.gl/iV4uy

Directors
Kate Aronowitz (Director of Design) http://goo.gl/6vKAO
Ethan Beard (Director of Facebook Developer Network)http://goo.gl/Nv6Dx
Peter Deng (Director of Product Management) http://goo.gl/sN5Qe
David Fisch (Director of Business Development) http://goo.gl/NUceN
Debbie Frost (Director of Comm./Public Affairs) http://goo.gl/bgW2y
Justin Osofsky (Director of Platform Partnerships) http://goo.gl/7C1Ra
Blake Ross (Director of Product) http://goo.gl/AecYg
Alex Schultz (Director of Growth) http://goo.gl/os20Z
Vaughan Smith (Director of Corporate Development) http://goo.gl/HLuKb

Product
Paul Adams (Product Manager) http://goo.gl/XWAmr
Eric Antonow (Product Marketing) http://goo.gl/v90P2
Will Cathcart (Product Manager) http://goo.gl/93PoL
Luke Delorme (Product Manager) http://goo.gl/1vZ57
Rohit Dhawan (Lead Product Manager, FB Pages) http://goo.gl/i9M59
Naomi Gleit (VP, User Feedback) http://goo.gl/i3c4s
Adrian Graham (Product Manager, FB Questions) http://goo.gl/bC68P
Cat Lee (Platform Product Marketing) http://goo.gl/xtZnx
Sam Lessin (Product Manager) http://goo.gl/DvQWb
David Recordon (Senior Open Programs Manager) http://goo.gl/LF9oo

Engineering
Keith Adams (Software Engineer) http://goo.gl/Hvbgt
Aditya Agarwal (Engineering Director) http://goo.gl/2OAJr
Arjun Banker (Software Engineer) http://goo.gl/HA3xi
Jing Chen (Software Engineer) http://goo.gl/cu0s7
Brent Goldman (Software Engineer) http://goo.gl/5iwIH
Benjamin Golub (Engineer, Platform) http://goo.gl/ugXAw
Adam Hupp (Software Engineer) http://goo.gl/EEHdz
Pedram Keyani (Engineer, Site Integrity) http://goo.gl/vRK82
Tobie Langel (Software Engineer) http://goo.gl/gl898
Justin Mitchell (Engineer, FB Photos) http://goo.gl/S3WJ6
Zach Rait (Engineer, Infrastructure) http://goo.gl/dmEhX
Arthur Rudolph (Software Engineer) http://goo.gl/hMEHm
Yariv Sadan (Engineer, Mobile) http://goo.gl/rwPQb
Luke Shepard (Engineering Manager) http://goo.gl/9yMkV
Mike Vernal (Engineer, Platform) http://goo.gl/srRv7

Design
Nathan Borror (Product Designer) http://goo.gl/7j8bf
Eric Fisher (Social Design Strategist) http://goo.gl/RL6U6
Rob Goodlatte (Product Designer) http://goo.gl/X0snH
Drew Hamlin (Product Designer) http://goo.gl/aXGby
Greg Hoy (Design Recruiter) http://goo.gl/fkUJr
Francis Luu (Product Designer) http://goo.gl/wIBKB
Adam Mosseri (Product Design Manager) http://goo.gl/G0g7S

Partner/Developer Relations
Jeff Bowen (Platform Developer Relations) http://goo.gl/uDCWs
Jacqueline Chang (Strategic Partner Manager) http://goo.gl/iiQpM
Andy Katzman (Platform Partnerships) http://goo.gl/dyMnH
Vadim Lavrusik (Journalist Program Manager) http://goo.gl/V3Div
Andy Mitchell (Strategic Media Partnerships) http://goo.gl/pWBHW

Mobile
Erick Tseng (Head of Mobile Products) http://goo.gl/AoMHd

Research
Pete Bratach (Technical Writer) http://goo.gl/VcJV3
Sean Bruich (Monetization Analytics) http://goo.gl/elYmF
Cameron Marlow (Data Scientist) http://goo.gl/oG6sB

Advertising/Marketing
Kevin Colleran (Sales) http://goo.gl/RRUzN
Todd Miner (Head of Sales IT) http://goo.gl/9AVOz
Eric Toda (Ad Ops, Global Marketing Solutions) http://goo.gl/TZY0m

Recruiting
Richard Cho (Recruiting Manager) http://goo.gl/AQlM2

Though not currently at Facebook, cofounders Chris Hughes (http://goo.gl/XWGHD) and Eduardo Saverin (http://goo.gl/0AjO2) also appear to be on G+.

MySpace, your space… where ever

MySpace’s Tom Anderson is not only on Google+, he’s also been helping them, believe or not. His updates often include feedback and feature suggestions that could improve the service!

Twitter too?

Twitter is in on the act as well, one of it’s co-founders, Biz Stone has a Google+ account but, like Zuckerberg, is not yet active.

Conclusion

Who would have thought that along with a Google+ account, you’d get a chance to hear and be heard by those in power?? Especially at a mega monster company like Google itself!

So start creating your Google Employee and Mashable Employee circles and find some other people in power too.

What’s more, with Google+, you don’t need to be friends with someone to add them to your list (in Google+’s case, a circle list). You can just find people, add them and presto, they’re in your news stream. The problem with this is that if you like a lot of tech people, celebrities, have lots of family and friends and also get some news through your feeds… well, it can start to get pretty noisy, pretty fast.

Circles to sort, Circles to filter

This is why you put people into circles in the first place, rather than just make them a friend. In this way, you can put all of those people into certain circles that you may want to read from more often than others.

You can make as many circles as you want too, so you don’t have to stop at “celebrities”. You can make circles such as “Celebs on Television” or “Celebs in Music” or what ever you want. You could even put “Celebs I read about every day”.

It’s actually important to do this kind of thing, even though it may end up making for a very large list of circles.

Where most people fail is where most people get overwhelmed

In my experience, from the people I’ve talked to, they feel overwhelmed quickly because when you visit Google+, you are on the “Stream” page by default. This page includes everyone that you have put into a circle. All of them!

Obviously, if you have 2,000 people in circles, or more, this can start to generate a lot of noise in your stream.

The key is to remember this:

This is your key to peace and tranquility. You’ve crated the circles, now use them. Click on the circle that you want to read from so that ONLY those people are displayed on the page.

If you have 20 family members but 2,000 people total… well, it makes sense to click on Family and filter out all the noise to see just what your family is up to.

It seems so simple, so basic but it is easily forgotten. And once you’re overwhelmed, there’s little to convince you to return and give it another try.

So once you’ve created your circles, use them… otherwise you’ll find very little value in them.

The key selling feature for Google+ right now is it’s ability to filter through that mass of people by allowing you to put people into “Circles” which is essentially a clever short hand for “circle of friends.”

The thing is, Facebook had this first.

If Google execs used Facebook

I imagine a day where 2 or more Google execs were sitting around discussing their Facebook profiles and how they rather like that they can set status messages or share links where only certain friends can see it… or maybe even exclude certain people.

More so, that they could put people into lists and include or exclude the entire list.

I also imagine, being that they’re smart execs, probably said to themselves “I just wish it did more and was easier to use.”

A real world example

My wife uses Facebook as does most of the people in the world but recently found herself in a bit of sticky situation with it. She had a job that she enjoyed and worked with people that she liked, thus, many of those people were in her Facebook friends list.

After a while, another company approached her to work for them. This company was very appealing to her because what they do is what she loves to do… photography.

In excitement, she opened up her computer, ready to share with all of her friends and family but then… hesitated.

She couldn’t put that on Facebook. Her co-workers would see it and then… it would be awkward.

I helped by explaining how she could put current co-workers into one list and post the status such that the new list would not be able to see it.

But her fears had already changed her mind.. between “going to all that trouble” and the paranoia of something going wrong and they could still see it.. she kept it to herself and off of Facebook.

If you had the choice

Now, if my wife had Google+ and Facebook, which is how it would most likely play out even if Google+ does do well, most people would have both, at least for quite some time…. if she had both, she’d rush to both to share that news.

Here’s where Facebook would lose out. In Facebook, she’d have to make the list, find the friends, make sure she doesn’t miss anyone, start sharing the status, click the little icon, type in the list name, hit the button and then hit share.

In Google+, she’d just sign in, choose a Circle and share.

See the problem?

In Google+, sharing with a list of friends is second nature. In Facebook, it’s a second step.

Conclusion

When people start setting up their Google+ accounts, they’ll be splitting up their friends from day one. In Facebook, most people haven’t done that. In fact, most people don’t even know that they can do it, much less how to.

But in reality, Facebook did it first… and in some senses, still does it better. It’s just not simple. Which is a shame because Facebook prides itself on simplicity.

If it’s not simple to do, it’s not worth doing.

Google recognized it’s importance and gave it time and effort and based their social network around it.

If Facebook had been doing that all along… well, Google+ would still become a reality but would it have the same selling power?

Facebook, you’ve coasted on the friends concept and let the Friend List functionality slip through the cracks for too long.

If my wife has to choose where to share sensitive information, she’ll do it on Google+ where she knows who is and isn’t reading it.

Hard work.

What?

Oh, you thought I was going to let you in on some industry secret or super plugin that would just make money roll in. I’m sorry to disappoint you. Funny enough, that is how many people think it works. You make a blog, figure out what the secrets are, implement them and quit your day job.

Reading more than you write

First of all, before any engineer can build a bridge or any architect can design a building, they must learn. That’s not to say they don’t build or draw while they learn. Academics are only half the battle. You also need experience.

But you need to learn faster than you can produce otherwise you’ll continue to produce at a slow rate of improvement. Oh, you will improve because that’s the point of getting the experience, to learn what to do better or not do at all.

Reading the do’s and don’t's from others will help you to put those experiences into practice even before you experience them yourself.

Actually, you may even learn better ways to do things yourself than from those you learned from… if you learn their ways and experience them for yourself at the same time.

It’s a job change, not a job replacement

You can’t expect to start a blog and quit your job right away. No one does that unless they happen to get a sex tape on the latest Hollywood big shot that or something like that.

Easy money is a myth that people invented in order to sell tickets to seminars in an effort to get easy money. You pay for the tickets, they get paid to tell you to do seminars and make money. You walk out feeling like a schmuck because all you learned was to become that guy.

Doing something for money… that’s a job. And if you want to make good money at it, you had better treat it like a job. A good job. A job you enjoy doing and want to do often.

Treat your business like a business

So you’re working hard and getting the posts made and reading every article on the internet that you can find… but it’s still not working. Now what?

Well, you’re an entrepreneur now. You want to run your own business, be your own boss and work for yourself. That’s right. It’s not just a blog if you want it to become your source of income. It’s your business.

Now, let me ask you… who do you know that thinks to themselves “I think I’ll write a few paragraphs every day, telling people random stuff and hope that people just give me money for it.”

No one right?

Would you pay someone to share a few paragraphs of thoughts with you every day?

Probably not.

What you need is a business plan. Define your product and make people want to pay for it.

Going back to the sharing a few paragraphs idea, let’s imagine for a moment that you leased a little place on a street, called it “my ramblings” and put a nice sign and paint job on it. You do well at sharing your thoughts, they’re enlightening, entertaining, funny, informative… but people walk out after and you haven’t made a cent. What went wrong?

So you cut a deal with a coffee shop and try to push coffee on the people while they listen and you make $0.10 a cup for it. Great business for the coffee shop, not so much for you. I mean, 5 people buy a cup of coffee one day, you made $0.50 that day.

Instead, what you need to do is lease that place, and design it so sell something. Yourself, books, pizza.. maybe coffee?

And then have people come there for those things and tell them your ramblings while they’re there.

Know your topic, know your audience, really sell it and tell stories about it to entice people to buy. Without a product, you’re just a story teller.

The secret

It’s a great book/movie but believing you’ll make money won’t get you there. You’re going to have to put some thought into it, come up with a plan, learn all you can, get your hands dirty with as much experience as you can and work at it… just like everything else you ever want to succeed at.

Twitter, like most communities, has developed it’s own verbiage and it’s own traditions… one example being “Follow Friday”.

However, like most communities that has traditions, over time, they change and become something different than what they were originally intended to be.

The basics first

Before I get into detail, I should point out that this tradition is a once a week thing… on Fridays. Hense the name. Also, it employs one of two hashtags. They are #FollowFriday and #FF for short.

On each Friday, people use one of those hashtags and mentions a person or persons that they follow.

How it used to be

Follow Friday used to be a way of telling everyone that follows you that they should all follow someone or some people that you follow. For example, I find Fred very informative or funny, I tweet to all my followers something like “For top rate information, #FollowFriday @fred”.

Now everyone knows that I recommend Fred.

What is has become

Let’s be honest, most people on Twitter don’t use Twitter for marketing, business deals or anything even remotely resembling being productive. They use it because it’s a social website. They can joke, talk and share with other people.

Because most people don’t take it all that seriously, the Follow Friday tradition has transitioned from a “recommendation tool” to a way to give a “shout out” to friends or family.

What you see most of the time these days is a tweet that has #FF at the beginning and then a string of names afterwards that fill every last bit of the 140 characters they’re allowed.

And not just one tweet but multiple tweets. Some people mention dozens… even hundreds of people each Friday.

Where’s the value?

Ok, so maybe you don’t use Twitter to do business but even so, your Follow Friday tweets do have value… if you do them right.

Let’s compare these two tweets:

1. #FF @person1 @person2 @person3 @person4 @person5 @person6 @person7 @person8 @person9 @person10 @person11 @person12 @person13 @person14
2. The funniest guy on Twitter, you should definitely #FollowFriday @person7

Right away, you can see what a mess the first example is. Let’s say you are person7… it’s nice that the person thought of you, but do you get any real value out of that tweet? Do you think you’ll get any new followers?

If you are person7 and that person had used the second example, you’d definitely be seeing some new followers out of that. People know what to expect and more importantly than that, you’re the only person mentioned. It’s not a big mess of names!

Bringing value back to the tradition

I’d like to give you a few things to think about the next time Friday rolls around and you’re considering the whole Follow Friday thing.

1. Do NOT use automated sites/programs. They do their best but all they’ll do is dump a bunch of names at you and you’ll be right back in the no-value situation once again.
2. Keep each tweet to 1 to 4 names…  if a person is presented with a group of names, they might look for a name they recognize but that’s it. They certainly won’t go clicking on them all, much less following them.
3. Add in a short description of why you’re recommending those people. “Very funny” or “tech savvy” are good examples. Just 2 words, rather short but people know why you recommend them and if they fit their interests.
4. Notepad is the best program that ever came with Windows. I use it through out the week to keep a tab on people that I’ve had good discussions with, retweeted me of often, had great insights… you get the idea. Then on Friday, I Follow Friday those people. Afterward, I wipe out the notepad and start again fresh the next week.
5. Along the same lines as #4, if you do have people you Follow Friday every single week, put them into groups or categories, such as funny, informative, supportive, etc… then, on each Friday, pick one group and Follow Friday those people. The next week, pick a different group. This way you keep the number of names down each week (which adds value to those people) but everyone gets their mentions.

Conclusion

The whole idea is that you are getting followers to the people that you think deserve it. That’s the goal. A big mess of names does not accomplish that in the slightest.

Your friends may feel upset if they Follow Friday you and you don’t do it back but you know what, they’ll understand. It’s not a social competition. And that time when you mention them, and only them, they’ll appreciate it far more.

My final tip to you, if you want to add real value… recommend someone on a random day other than Friday. For example, on Tuesday, tweet “I know it’s not Friday but I really recommend you follow @person7.”

That person is guaranteed to get a new follower or two and will appreciate it far more. That’s real value.

If you’ve been on Twitter for any good length of time and gathered a few followers, you’ve probably already heard the term “Follow me and I’ll follow you” or “Follow me, I follow back”.

According to some people, this is the unwritten rule of Twitter, that it’s not just rude, but down right wrong not to uphold.

I’m going to tell you why that just simply is not true.

My stalker does not interest me

Ok so, I don’t really have a stalker that hides in the bushes and follows my every move but if I did, I imagine that it would be a lot like having a Twitter follower.

Every picture I tweet, every emotion I tweet, every bowel movement (yes, some people tweet those.. not me, of course… ), you get the idea… your followers are following you. They’re interested in what you have to say.

Now, just because someone follows you, that doesn’t mean that you’d have any interest in them. Let me give you an example.

I have a Twitter account focused on autism. I mean, focused. It’s all I talk about with that account. Now, I get some followers that have an interest in autism but have never once tweeted about autism. Some of them are sports nuts, some are students, some talk about internet marketing… oh so many of them are all about internet marketing. Anyway…

Those people have never once tweeted anything that I’d be interested in as an autism advocate. So why would I follow them? Because of some unwritten rule about how it’s rude?

As an autism advocate, I am better served to have an all autism related list of people I follow so that I can learn from them, read the news they tweet and discuss sciences and experiences with them. If I have a list of 500 autism advocates and 150 of them do not discuss autism, my list becomes diluted and hard to get through.

Some apps provide filters and searches but seriously, that’s not going to do the job. I want to read about my topic of choice, I want to talk about my topic of choice. It’s great that people follow me if they have an interest in what they tweet but I will not follow back when I have no interest in what they tweet.

Following is so 2008….  now we have lists!

Using the same examples, let’s say I have a bunch of followers that are into hockey. Now, I do have an interest in hockey but my account is about autism so I don’t want a bunch of hockey talk in my time line.

Introducing lists!

In Twitter, you can create a list, call it hockey and put people that discuss hockey into it. Any time a hockey person follows you because they have an interest in your tweets…. instead of hitting the follow button, list them.

This way, your main time line is still entirely focused on your topic of interest and any time you want to indulge in hockey talk, you just click on your list and presto, a new time line that consists of nothing but hockey.

You’re not following them… but you are. It might not be a +1 in their followers count but you are still “following” them in a sense.

People will always abuse a good thing

It’s a good notion, to not be rude… to follow people that follow you just to be nice. But let’s be honest… there are thousands, if not, millions of people who take advantage of that concept.

Every single day, I get people who follow just so that I’ll follow them back and give them that +1.

They’re usually pretty easy to spot. Often they’ll be following 4000 people and have 1000 followers back. Some of them have 0 tweets yet they follow 800 people and have 200 people following them.

Why are those 200 people following that person?? Oh right, unwritten rule. It’s certainly not to read the 0 tweets they have.

There are people that will stack up hundreds of thousands of follows, knowing they’ll get tens of thousands of people following them back before they even make their first tweet.

They’re counting on it. And why? Status I guess. Just to have that big number. It certainly doesn’t make them any money. Or does it?

If you followed them, there’s a very good chance that your time line will light up with some spam at some point in the future. Seemed harmless before but with tens of thousands of followers, they have a big audience to spam to now.

Conclusion

Put aside the need to have a big follower count. It’s really not as much of a status symbol as you might think. If you’re on Twitter just for the sake of screwing around, then fine. Do what ever you want. No harm, no loss.

But if you’re even remotely serious about using Twitter to learn, to educate, to make money or anything like that… it’s probably best that you think of the unwritten rule as more of a guideline.

If it was real life, you’d follow the people that interest you. Plain and simple. Why should Twitter be different?

Most everyone knows about the privacy settings in Facebook, even if most people still get them wrong, but what most people don’t know how to use at all, much less effectively, are the lists.

If you have more than say… 5 friends, you should probably know about lists and how to use them.

I talk to people every single day that wish that they could announce a new job or share something personal but don’t because they don’t want some people in their friends list to see it.

With lists, you can share everything and not worry about the wrong people seeing something they shouldn’t. Here’s how.

The Account menu – Control center for everything about your account

First you have to go to the top right of the page where it says “Account” with a little down arrow beside it. You’ll become quite familiar with that little down arrow as it is used to indicate that there’s more available if you mouse over it or click on it.

From there, click on the Edit Friends menu item to be taken to the friend management page, which is also where you will create and manage lists.

On this page, you’ll see the lists you already have created, if any… in the middle, a list of all of your friends and on top of that, a button that says “Create a List” that looks like this:

Click on that to create your first list. A little box will pop up that has a field near the top where you can name the list and the rest of the box is filled with your list of friends. You can scroll through to find the friends you want to select or you can simply start typing in their name in the box that says “Start typing in a name”

For this example, name your list “Family” and go through all of the people in your list that are related to you. Click on them so that they are dark blue.

When you’re done, click on the blue “Create List” button at the bottom of the box. Presto, your first list is created. You can create as many lists as you like, I suggest lists such as “Work”, “Games”, “Classmates” and so forth like that.

Edit Lists – Now you can begin adding friends to your lists

Once you have a list or more created, you will now see an “Edit List” option beside the names of your friends. It will only show on one friend at a time, you’ll have to put your mouse over the other friends to see it available for those friends.

When you click on it, you’ll see a list of available lists that you can add that friend to. If you are viewing a family member and mouse over that link, you’ll actually see a little black box appear with “Family” in it. That’s Facebooks way of telling you which lists that friend already belongs to.

You can click on it and add them to more lists or remove them from lists too.

Putting your lists to work – How to use them now that you have them

When you update your status or share a link or a photo, it will only be visible to your friends, unless you’ve updated your privacy settings to have some other default.

But let’s say you want to set your status message that should be for family only… meaning that no one from work or school should read it. Here’s how you can do that now:

Beside the “Share” button is a little lock icon, which has another of one of those down arrows. When you mouse over it, a black box appears showing you who is going to see what you share.

Clicking on it opens a new box that will let you change that.

This box has two sections… the top is for restricting who sees your status (friends only) and the bottom is for setting who can’t see your status (everyone except family).

When you click on the drop down in the top, you’ll see that “Friends Only” is selected, we want to set it up so that only family can read your status so we will change that to “Specific People”.

Once you select “Specific People”, a new box will appear asking you to choose which people.

In this new box, you can enter people’s names or the name of a list… this is what we want to do.

As you type, Facebook will  find your friends and lists that fit the letters you’re typing and give you options to just click on. As you type “f… a… m…” the word “Family” will just show up for you to plug in there in the blue box. Clicking on the X beside it will remove it.

Once you have “Specific People” selected in the drop down and “Family” entered into the box, you are now ready to save those settings so that only your family can read your status message. Click on the “Save Settings” to save the information you entered.

By the way, as I said earlier, if you had typed in “Family” into the “Hide this from” area, then everyone would be able to read your status except for your family!

Conclusion

This is where people often go wrong when using Facebook. A lot of jobs would have been saved if people had complained about work if they had a “work” or “coworkers” list and used the “Hide this from” option.

Relationships would be saved, private information could be shared safely and links, photos and videos can be shared with only those that you really intend to have see them.

In my case, there are a few Facebook games that I play which require me to post requests to my wall. That can be very annoying for the hundreds of friends that I have that don’t play those games.

So, for example, CityVille… I put the 15 friends I have that play that game into a list called CityVille so that any time the game asks me to post to my wall, I click the lock icon, choose Specific People, enter CityVille into the box and save the settings… presto, the only people on Facebook that see those requests are my friends that play the game with me.

Everyone else has no idea I even play the game.

PS

Once you have your lists in place, any new friends that you add will have a list option available as you add them so that you can put them directly into the appropriate list right away, no need to load up the ole friend list later.

I regret to announce that the Firefox Extension FfvB has reached it’s end of life and will no longer be supported.

With the release of Firefox 4 as well as the upgrade of vBulletin to version 4, FfvB would require a complete rewrite and as it stands right now, it already takes too much time to support, especially considering it makes virtually no money.

Our apologies but as it stands right now, FfvB no longer exists.