If you're like most Facebook users, you'll have gradually built up hundreds of friends, including family, school friends, old teachers, current friends, work friends, your partner's work friends and possibly the managing director of your company.
That's all good until you show what a laconic and self-deprecating person you are by setting your status line as Jack (or Jill) as "a one-can screamer; epic hangover" and you take a day off to nurse your throbbing temples.
Halfway through your mid-afternoon nap, you wake up with a start and the painful realisation that all your workmates and your boss, and your boss's boss, can read your status lines too.
By now the tale of AAPT call centre employee Kyle Doyle has passed into legend. The story goes that Doyle was fired after posting on his Facebook page: "f--- it i'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!"
There's been speculation about whether this was a hoax - but that's not the point. We laughed because it could so easily happen. If only Kyle had known how to separate work and personal friends on Facebook, he could have saved his job.
Here's how (and note: the answer is not to create two identities on Facebook - one for your personal self, named "Jake the caped crusader" and one for your work colleagues, named "Jake Green").
STEP 1: Set up Facebook friends lists
Once you've logged on to Facebook, go to the "Friends" tab. In the left-hand column, you'll see a "Friend lists" column. Click the "Make a new list" button.
Type a name for your new list. You can add friends to it by typing their names into the "Add to list" box Facebook provides.
If you have a lot of friends, it might be easier to click the "Select multiple friends" link, which provides the familiar interface of all your friends in a grid, with the ability to click on them to select them. Once you've selected all your friends for a list, click "Save list". Now repeat this step until you have made lists for all your various types of friends.
This bit can be rather tedious if you have a lot of friends but it's a necessary part of setting up different privacy settings for your work and personal friends - otherwise Facebook can't tell your friends apart.
STEP 2: Set up privacy settings
Now, go to Facebook's privacy settings page to set up different privacy settings for each list of friends.
In the very top menu bar, select "Settings", then "Privacy Settings" from the drop-down menu.
Now you can set which of your friends can see different parts of your profile. For example, if you didn't want your family to see your friends' obscene wall posts on your profile, select the "Profile" section, then the drop-down next to "Wall posts". Select "Customize . . ." .
A window will pop up that lets you customise your settings for wall posts. Here you can select an appropriate general privacy level, such as "Friends of friends" or "Only friends".
The "Except these people" box below is the key to the whole thing.
In this box, you can type in individual names of friends or lists of friends.
So, for example, you could type in "family" if you had a friends list called "Family" - this would block them from seeing your wall posts.
Repeat this process for each part of your Facebook profile to ensure you're showing the right parts to the right people.
Now, click "Save changes" at the bottom.
STEP 3: Lock down who can search for you
If you're worried about your antics coming up on Google in the future (employers are increasingly Googling applicants' names to find out more about the "real them"), you can set who should be able to find you on Facebook too.
In the privacy settings, go to "Search" and you can select to let everyone (any random person), just friends of friends or only current friends find you on Facebook. You can also control whether your profile should be listed publicly on Google.
Scource: Dan Warne, Sydney Morning Herald, 29/12/2008
