In the second post about the ideal social network, I will be blogging about lists.

Twitter and Facebook both have lists systems to manage users friends and followers. However, these lists are too hidden, and should be more at the core of the social network.

Twitter’s Lists

Twitter does a really good job with lists. Users can create a public or private list of certain people, and categorize the list of people they follow. For example, I have a list for the tech blogs I follow, the local people, and the news sites I follow. This allows me to quickly see updates about the topic I want. Not much to complain about here.

Facebook’s Lists

Facebook, however, does not do such a good job. The lists are hidden in the settings for most users. Not enough people on Facebook realize that lists actually exist, and don’t use them. The list system should be more visible, like on Twitter. Users should be able to open a person’s profile, and quickly add them to a list from there. Same with pages. Facebook makes it really complicated to add a Page to a list. Users must create a list, and then when choosing who to add to the list, they must click on “multiple people,” and scroll down to the bottom to see all their Pages.

Users on Facebook should also be able to share a list of Pages with their friends easily. For example, if a user curates a list for local pages within a community, there is no way of sharing it. Users can feature lists on their profile, but it will only show friends, not Pages.

Facebook should also make it easier to share certain stuff with certain groups of friends. Currently, this is all hidden under the big “custom” section, and is too complicated for some users to use. Instead of seeing a list of “everyone, friends of friends, friends, and custom,” it should show a users friend lists instead, allowing a user to check off which lists they want to share a piece of content with.

If I want to filter my news feed by a certain list, it requires up to four clicks on Facebook, where on Twitter, it’s just two. Facebook needs to make accessing the lists easier.

The Ideal Social Network’s Lists

It should be easy to add someone to a list from their profile or page.

For more personal social networks like Facebook, it should be easy to share content with certain lists of people.

Lists should be easily shared with one another, or made private, if a user chooses

A user should easily be able to filter their updates from friends through lists.

The Ideal Social Network is a series about what I think a social network should be like, and why Twitter and Facebook fail to meet these standards. This is the second blog post in the series. Stay tuned for more.