Reconnect With Facebooks' New Find Friends Browser

Q: I'm on Facebook, but now what? How do I find -- and reconnect with -- some of my old friends from school?

A: So you've signed up and are now on Facebook with everyone else. But you don't have enough friends. Or maybe you haven't been able to reconnect with all of those high schools friends that you were told Facebook would help you to reconnect with. The social network recently rolled out a new -- and slick! -- Find Friends Browser that's meant to make reconnecting a lot easier than searching through pages of people. (There are a lot of Nicholas Jacksons out there.)

"In an effort to help people discover more of their friends, Facebook has updated their find friends browser," wrote Nick O'Neill at All Facebook, an unofficial blog about all things Facebook. "The tool, which allows people to find existing friends, has gone through a number of changes in the past few months."

And the finished product is worth checking out. The first time I logged in, it helped me to spot some people I wanted to add to my network but had overlooked (like my boss' boss).

In the past, Facebook's recommendation page suggested some friends that you might want to add. It was clunky, often recommending the same person after you had actively expressed disinterest. The new page uses a number of factors -- some of them unclear -- to rank Facebook users. And it's easy to sort -- by school, employer, hometown -- through the barrage of names and faces.

Tools mentioned in this entry:

• FACEBOOK'S FIND FRIENDS BROWSER

More questions? View the complete Toolkit archive.