Altoids, makers of breath mints, has launched a free application for desktops yesterday allowing the user to create a special stream of Facebook friends and “Tune Out” everyone else on Facebook. Tune Out was previously available for iPhones and iPads and can be downloaded at the Altoids Facebook Page on the Tune Out tab — it’s one of the cleverer branded Facebook apps we’ve seen to date.

Altoids is promoting the app as a way to help people filter through the many “friends” most users have on Facebook these days so they don’t miss out on hearing from the people they actually care about.

The way it works after download is, it prompts the user to login to Facebook. Then you search for Facebook friends you want to add to the Tune Out list, Altoids recommends no more than 16; updates to each profile are noted with stars. From that point on, Tune Out users will only see updates from these friends in their customized stream, although the list remains alterable.

Using Tune Out allows Facebook users to continue to comment and interact with friends’ profiles, but helps to focus attention on the profiles of their Tune Out list.

The app also works with Twitter.

Altoids only has about 11,300 Likes on its Facebook Page at this point so the app may be meant to help grow the Page’s audience, although the Wall doesn’t reflect much excitement from fans or the admin about the app.