This is Post 2 of 2 about controlling Twitter and Facebook overload. This post focuses on controlling your Facebook experience. Post 1 focused on filtering the Twitter firehose.
If you’ve been on Facebook for a while, you might know these 3 Essential Tips for controlling your Facebook experience.
If you feel like this on Facebook…
please keep reading.
By default and by design, your Facebook profile is open. If you’ve never changed a setting, know that your profile is public (public = Google, anyone can read your status updates), you are set up to get all kinds of notifications via email (so-and-so commented on your post, likes your link, wants to be friends, beat you in Lexulous, aaaaahhh), and your primary view – the newsfeed – will become a gushing stream polluted with game, quiz and applications posts the more you are on the social network.
According to Facebook statistics, the average user:
- Has 130 friends
- Is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
- Creates 90 pieces of content each month
Furthermore, people interact with over 900 million objects (pages, groups, events and community pages). AllFacebook tells us that the top applications on Facebook are almost always games, which produce tons of notifications every day.
Whew, that’s a lot of stuff!
Well, it’s your Facebook account. Take control!
1. Hide Stuff, Relentlessly
Hover over any item in your newsfeed – a post from a page, a friend, group or an app – and you’ll see a little “X” in the right corner. Click on the “X” and you’ll see this:
This is a page post, so the hide options are Hide this post, Hide all by [page], Unlike Page or Mark as Spam.
Whenever you see a type of post you don’t want, hover and hide!
Only you know what you hide. The page or person or app you hide doesn’t know that you in particular have hid them (they do see aggregate number of people who have hid them, but again, no individual info is given to the pages or apps).
If you change your mind and want to allow an app back into your feed, scroll ALL the way to the bottom of your newsfeed and click Edit Options to get this:
“X” the app you want back in your feed and click Save.
I recommend hiding almost all game and quiz apps. Hiding people is less harsh than un-friending them, and they’ll never know that you’ve done it.
There are other apps such as NetworkedBlogs, Twitter, Dlvr.it, Social RSS, Hootsuite and Thrive that you shouldn’t hide. These apps are in a different class than the games – they help bring content over from blogs and other social networks. If you block, say, NetworkedBlogs, you will be blocking EVERY POST by EVERYONE and EVERY PAGE that uses that app – 1 million users.
2. Cut Off Email Notifications That Bug You
Facebook notifies you when actions are taken that involve you – a friend request, a comment, an invitation. Notifications can show up in 3 places – on-site, email and text.
You are in total control of email and text notifications (in truth these are the ones that can really annoy you). You cannot control on-site notifications.
To adjust email and text notifications, start in the right corner with Account and then select Account Settings and then Notifications. This is what you will see:
TIP: There’s more notification possibilities than you ever thought possible. Start with unchecking the ones that bug you. You can always come back, and there will always be on-site notifications.
Be sure to scroll down and hit Save.
3. The Power User’s Secret Weapon: Filter Your Feed With Friend Lists
Facebook lets you categorize your friends and pages into Lists. You can then use the list as a filter for your newsfeed.
Smart lists = smart look at your newsfeed.
Here are my key lists:
- Family
- Friends
- High School
- Hudson Valley
- Professional
- Rhinebeck
And here’s how I look at them in my newsfeed:
If I want to know what’s going on locally, I filter by Hudson Valley. If I want to know what’s going on with family, I filter by Family. As you can see in the screen capture, you can also filter by other categories – Page, Questions and Photos. Filter by Pages is one of my favorites.
To make friend lists, start with Account and then click Edit Friends. Click to the right of the person’s name to add or remove them from a List. You can add a person to more than one list.
Every time I get a new friend, I add him or her to a list, so everyone is on a list. If you already have a lot of friends and want to do this, set aside at least an hour. And only make the bare minimum number of lists that you need, else they become meaningless.
Good luck!
