Facebook is testing a way for its users to "Find friends from different parts of your life."
The tool is very much for discovery of new potential friends, but, as thenextweb.com points out, when Facebook tests something it's usually a tip-of-the-spear approach to a larger initiative.
One of the biggest accolades hoisted upon Google+ is its Circles feature -- where one isn't necessarily sharing an upside-down margarita pic with their boss along with everyone else in their feed.
In G+ one can quietly follow tastemakers, group people as work colleagues, or create all new categories of social ties (frenemies?).
The initial new "friend discovery" tool from Facebook allows users to parse potential friends by location, school or mutual friends.
Whether these new groups would be manual or automated. We lean toward the manual ... when FB auto-shares stuff it usually doesn't go well for them or for users.
