Wednesday, December 2, 2009

6 Ways to Enhance your Facebook Experience

Join GeekyClown's Fan Page on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
Over the last several months I have been reading countless posts etc. about the hatred for the new Facebook and the Live Feed.  And to those who have a hard time embracing change, here comes some more bad news for you - Facebook is making more UI changes (check it out here at Mashable's Web site: http://mashable.com/2009/11/30/facebook-redesign-3/).  Below are five things that you can do to enhance your Facebook experience even with the new Live Feed and cosmetic changes.

Hide posts on your Live Feed.  I am so thrilled that you are playing Farmville/Mafia Wars/YoVille!/Bejeweled Blitz but I don't need to see a post of it each time you play.  When you get a post like that hover over the upper-right hand corner of the post and a 'Hidden' button will appear.  Click that and you can get rid of those posts.  You can also use this tool to get rid of annoying posters who post every five minutes and eat up your entire live feed (as long as it isn't me).

Show more posts from certain friends in the Live Feed.  A friend commented the other day that he keeps getting posts on his Live Feed from people he doesn't really care about and some of the people he does he never sees.  We chuckled and called it, "Facebook's Favorites."  You can adjust and hide certain friends (mentioned above) and you can tell Facebook to show more posts from certain friends.  While in your Live Feed, scroll all the way to the bottom.  On the left it will say 'Older Posts' and on the right it will say 'Edit Options'.  Choose 'Edit Options' and you can type in the names of friends you want to show more posts from.

Create lists to categorize your friends.  As I mentioned above, the Live Feed sends everything out and if you haven't been online in awhile, you may have to scroll through countless pages of friend's posts, etc.  One way to keep these in order is to categorize your friends into lists.  Generally, you can create a list of people you actually care about reading their posts (the I only have 15 minutes because I am on break list); your people you care about and some of the people you haven't talked to since college list (the I have an hour lunch break list); and your everyone and everything, no holds barred, the people I haven't talked to since grammar school list - aka the Live Feed.  You can create a list by (from your Live Feed or News Feed) click on 'More' in the left column (where your apps, etc. are) and at the bottom it says 'Create List'.  Name your list at the top and then put in your friends/fan pages for this list.  Once completed and saved, you can move your list to the top of your apps so you can access it easily.

Control what Facebook e-mails.  I hate getting Facebook messages every time anything happens on Facebook.  I alleviated this by adjusting my notification settings.  You do this by hovering over 'Settings' (at the top between your name and log out) and choose 'Account Settings'.  Click the 'Notifications' tab.  Now, you can go through your long list of items and choose which items you want to clutter your inbox with.  If you are like me, most of the items are unchecked.

Make status updates from the Live Feed or News Feed.  If you make status updates from your profile page, it just puts it on your wall but doesn't alert your friends of the update.  Always make your updates from the Live Feed or News Feed.

You can remove Facebook suggestions.  I used to see a whole lot of suggestions from Facebook of people that I didn't know.  Note to Facebook, just because I have friends that may know this person doesn't mean that I do.  You can help train Facebook by clicking the black X that appears next to the suggestion so Facebook won't show it to you again.  That helps to eliminate suggestions of people you don't know and just keep the people you are ignoring.

No comments:

Post a Comment