When will Facebook make it easier to filter our audience?

It's happened to us all. We post something on Facebook intended for the circle of friends we spend most of our time with, unaware of the eyes of the 300 plus 'friends' we have collected over the years, some of whom you hardly know anymore. Included in that bunch are colleagues that have added you as a friend, a request that you haven't been able to ignore, so you accepted reluctantly. The floodgates get weaker with each reluctant add and then the inevitable happens. One day you go in to work and you have the typical Monday morning conversation with a colleague who says 'oh I know all about your weekend, I saw your Facebook post.' Immediately you realize that you need to lock down your Facebook page...again.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO. Playing catch up?

I have made my page private numerous times. I have re-worked the security settings to my liking, I have followed Facebook's advisory updates over the years, I even started privatizing individual posts with the help of the little padlock which proved to be just too finicky. I have created groups, edited groups and managed my limited profile over and over again, but still the same problem still emerges. That same colleague who said a few weeks previous: 'Hey, Craig, why can't I comment on your wall or your photos? Do you have me on private or something?' Then the awkward response, knowing full well that they know what you've done. 'Eh, no, I haven't. That's weird, maybe it's like that by default. I'll check it out later and change it.' 

The lie stinks and they know it. Facebook lacks tact in this regard. As a friend it lacks subtlety. If Facebook doesn't want you in on the conversation, you're gonna know about it. The absence of a comment box or a profile with 'no pictures' is like a door slammed in your face. It's says I don't want to be your friend, but I'll let you want to be my friend. No one likes being ignored or excluded, and it doesn't help the awkward situation when Facebook draws it to your attention that you're clearly on a restricted 'list'. 

We do need privacy, but it shouldn't be at the cost of someone's pride by explicitly excluding them from your Facebook world. Surely discretion can be achieved with Social Media? You'd think that after all this time, money and popularity, Facebook would have innovated a bit and cracked down on this a bit more by now. It's probably coming, but only in catch up to Google+. Google did the research and saw that just like the way we wouldn't have the same way of talking to our colleagues as we do our girlfriend, younger cousin or foreign friends, we wouldn't want to share the same information with everyone. 

Simply put, we all have 'circles' Different circles of friends with who different things matter and different things count. We need to be able to filter out our audience as we like, and be able to do it easily without ostracizing our friends. Come on Facebook....get to it!