Naomi Dawn Musch

All the new Facebook changes certainly have created a mild uproar. As we try to understand the new navigation features, it's easy to feel a little bit lost and confused. Friends whose statuses we enjoyed perusing might now get lost in the muddle. The real-time ticker on the side of the page can scroll us into information overload. But there is a way to better manage what you see and thus use your Facebook time more effectively.

Use the lists feature on the left hand side of the home page.

With lists, you can see only your close friends' feeds, or just your relatives', acquaintances, or perhaps fellow workers or classmates. There is even a "Restricted" List. This is where you put those friends whom you only want to see the posts and profiles you make public.

Those are some of the basic lists. You can also click on "more" (which highlights when you slide your cursor over the word "lists"). There you can create even more lists. These could include friends associated with your publisher, church friends, a club you're involved with, or -- here's one I like -- Writer Friends.

One tip: For your own privacy control, be aware of who is seeing your posts by using the buttons on your status bar. By creating lists, you can post statuses that only people on a specified list will see. If you want to make a comment to your church group, for instance, you can select that privacy setting from among the clickdown lists in your status bar. (The button usually says "Public", but if you click on it, you will see the menu of choices.)

When you start a list, you will be given suggestions for people to add to the list. If there's someone not suggested whom you wish to add, you simply type in their name.

Another tip: Don't cross post many people to different lists if you don't want to read their feeds all over the place. I do have a couple of people on more than one list, but I've decided that in the future I probably won't do that much so as not to clog up my lists.

If you have several hundred friends, lists make organizing them -- and actually getting to interact with them -- more doable.

Write on!