The segmentation of the Facebook ‘friend space’ is about to happen, friends will be chosen to play a role in influencing one’s life and choices.  You have about two weeks to decide how you want to be positioned.

I was trying hard to understand what is behind the recent Facebook home page makeover – why throw all content items into the same stream?  Why break the established multimedia storytelling paradigm?  The answer lies in the need and ability to segment your friends into ‘friend lists’ which channel – hopefully – topical info into streams that have some consistency and focus.

I gave it a try and went through all my 825 friends, sorting them into the following categories which I have chosen partly based on my needs, partly based on the person’s perceived ‘Facebook strategy’, partly based on what I know about the individual in question (despite the FB behavior).  My approach is very pragmatic and utilitarian: the goal is to create useful tools with the help of the social graph.  The intent is *not* to fit every friend somewhere – many of my friends were left without any coverage in the segmentation model – a clear sign of a temporary mutual failure on a micro-level, some received inclusion in 2-3 different Lists.

Let’s move ahead and look at some of the Friend Lists I created:

• Newscasters.  These are friends who aggregate and redistribute news information, often with brief personal comments.  And example of this type of a person in my network is Guy Kawasaki with his company Alltop.  Why this is  better than RSS feeds? Only if I want to distribute the info further.  And as a pure realtime platform Twitter would serve me better here with its search capabilities.
• Thought Leaders.  Currently I have singled out 48 friends who seem to produce fairly consistent industry analysis through their FB publishing activity.  Now my customized stream looks a lot more like something I want to review every morning.
• Latent Thought Leaders.  Interestingly, there are 326 friends I have chosen as individuals who should be acting as thought leaders but who choose not to.  I have build a Friend List out of those in order to be able to monitor their progress.
• Corporate Captives.  These are people who – despite their often impressive titles – will contribute little to the community at large.  I will want to monitor their progress, too.
• Dealmakers.  The business people often choose to let the Thought Leaders drive the deer out of the bushes while waiting with the rifle to move in for a kill.  I am curious to learn how the intersection of these people and Thought Leaders evolves.
• Comedians.  These are people who choose to entertain the crowds – often with great success.  They may use it as a strategy to gather audience and move down the road to take on different roles.
• Lady Magnets.  These men seem to have unfair success in accumulating an attractive social graph.  I want to be there to study them and to learn.
• Tapio’s Digital Divas.  These ladies, initially fourteen, represent an selection of digitally savvy and innovative ladies from a variety of professions with a healthy dose of etheric qualities.

This is just an initial cut into what I would call ‘friend segmentation’.  It will create new dynamic within Facebook and users should take notes to make sure their behavior helps them get visibility among those who matter relative to their goals.

Interested in hearing your thoughts.