Evidently, in an attempt to beat Google+ Circles and stay on top of everything in the social network market, Facebook debuted Smart Lists. This is an improved friend lists with which users can customize their lists of friends, define privacy settings and filter the news feed. The unveiling came the same day the company’s representatives met with D.C. lawmakers to address a privacy issue alarming a number of members of the U.S. Congress: online safety for children.

With the Smart Lists, users can target specific groups of people to share their information. The default lists include work, school, family and city. While a smart list would automatically pick up friends who went to the same school or work for the same company, users can manually add and subtract friends on the lists. Google+ has not yet developed the automatic listing functionality. This is particularly helpful for users who are friends with their boss or other superiors and colleagues on Facebook.

This comes a week after Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, who also met with members of Congress about privacy issues. The search engine giant spent more than $2 million to lobby Congress just in the first quarter of this year, CBS reported.

Via eweek