…will help make the platform even more mainstream.

This upcoming feature on Facebook will enable the users to group their contacts. You can let the different “groups” of people see different parts of your profile.

This is important because it is taking the wind out of those people’s sails who claim that Facebook should be for personal use only. Business  people are often still reluctant to use Facebook in the same way they would use for example LinkedIn or Xing. But the richness of Facebook’s user interface and the sheer volume of people that you can connect with are by far superior to those Business-centred networks, which is the reason why many people are already using Facebook as their universal networking platform.

But now also those who don’t want to show the photos of their last weekend’s exploits can use Facebook for both personal, business and all other uses they wish to use it for… I think this will get even more users to sign up or move their accounts from LinkedIn and Co. to Facebook.

Stowe Boyd makes a good point though: “Please don’t do this the wrong way: subdividing into discrete collections, where someone is either a Work friend or a Play friend, but can’t be both. Those are ‘Groups’.” He suggests the term ‘Groupings’: you should tag people with more than one term. And I agree. After all, we don’t have just business colleagues, or personal friends, or team mates etc. in our offline lives either.