Facebook news feeds get more useful through new filtering options

I’m already a pretty big fan of the Facebook redesign, because it helps me quickly find out what my friends who don’t use other online social services are up to. My favorite part has been the tabbed news feeds, which let you sort based on things like photos, and shared links from around the web.

That feature got more useful last night. Facebook introduced more ways to filter feeds. You can filter by application, including Facebook applications. The company groups its Events feature in with the other applications, so now you can filter news feed using Events to easily see your social calendar. You can also filter based on your friend lists. I’ve been busy sorting all my Facebook friends into lists so now I can see what only a specific group is up to. Since I’ve separated college friends from friends in the tech world and elsewhere, I can now quickly filter to see just what my list of college friends are up to (see screenshot). That filter is a flashback to a time when my only friends on Facebook were college students.

The kicker, of course, is that it’s not clear how many Facebook users actually care about the new tabs, the ability to filter based on specific applications — how many people sort their Facebook friends into lists, by the way? — or the redesign in general. But that’s Facebook’s problem; personally, I’m happy with the changes.