Last week Facebook rolled out a new feature to help you find friends and make new contacts on the worlds most popular social network. You can see the new feature on the top right hand part of the menu bar next to the Account button. It is called Find Friends.

When you click on the link you are taken through to a page with people that you may possibly know that is based on your current set of friends. The more of them that are friends with an individual the higher up the listing they will come, which makes sense as somebody who is friends with 20 of your other friends is likely to be somebody that you already know.

The main part of the screen is split into a grid showing a picture of the person, their name and how many mutual friends they have. On the left hand side of the page are a set of filters that allow you to set parameters such as your Hometown, Employer etc.

People that are in your blocked list do not show up, so you don’t have to look at your stalkers and ex’s!

I have had the feature for the best part of a week now and although I think that it is potentially a useful tool I am not totally convinced of the need for it. My thought would be that if I ever want to trace somebody I use the search function. Perhaps it will be of more use to those who have just joined Facebook and are looking for a way to contact a large number of people in a short space of time, or those who believe that a measure of ones standing in society is directly proportional to the number of friends that you have on Facebook.