Facebook How-To

Number one

 

Other Rants and Raves

 

June 2009

I have some friends that are just getting onto Facebook. They have asked me a few questions and I thought that others might want to know these things to. Here are some tips.

1. Too many messages from some people... Do you have someone who blogs on Facebook like it was twitter? It seems like every twenty minutes they're telling you something? Sure, all Facebook posts are about minutia, like passing a friend on a busy street while going somewhere else. Just a quick, "hi, what's up with you?" But it's like some people follow you down the street talking at you incessantly. So much so that you can't even see your other friends walk by. Well you don't have to take the extreme action of un-friending them. You can just hide them from you.

This shows a Facebook post by Erling. A great guy, and one that does *not* abuse the posting facility. In fact, I wish he posted more often. But as an example, you could hover your mouse cursor over the area I've circled in red. At that point a "Hide" button will appear. Click on that and you'll be given the option to hide future posts from that person.

2. How do I get back people I've hidden? Of course you will no sooner "hide" someone then you will decide that you do in fact want to see what they have to post about. In that case you just scroll to the bottom of your news feed. There you can quickly see any recently hidden posts. Or click Edit Options and you'll have a chance to move a reformed poster from "hide" to "unhide".

3. What about those annoying "You've been hit with a water balloon, click here to fight back!" Or, "XYZ just took the quiz What kind of bicycle tire are you? and XYZ is a knobby 32-inch over inflated cross training Martikona." These seem to take off like a wild fire in a Santa Ana.

If you follow the instructions above to Hide a person on one of these posts you will have the additional choice to "hide" an application. So you don't have to hide the person, just hide the annoying application.

4. I've added Mr. ABC as a friend, but I'm not sure I want him to see everything my whacky friends post on my "wall". Do I have to "unfriend" him?

Sure you can, but what if he's the uncle of the woman who sits in the cubicle next to you? Unfriending him might cause all kind of work strife. You don't have to unfriend him, just take away his permission to view those posts. He'll never even know.

Click on your name in the upper right hand of the navigation menu. Click on your Wall tab. Then the Settings as circled below.

You will get several choices, like the ones below. You can click on Edit Custom Settings and then choose one or more people who will no longer get to see posts on your wall. Cool. He's cut out and doesn't even know it.

So have I done this to anyone? Well certainly Pastor Deacon Fred. What about those "4 others"? You will never know - particularly if you are one of them!!! LOL.

5. Do you ever see some people's posts that you think were a bit too personal? Something like:

XYZ > ABC: Hey chick, what's up? Wanna' do some blow tonight at my place? Let's get jacked up. Can't wait.

Say what? Well, Ms. XYZ probably meant to send a rather private message to Ms. ABC. The appropriate communication would be email. Perhaps a Facebook message. Ms. XYZ didn't have a clue and instead just wrote in that text box that invites you to "write something."

However, if you write something here, then everyone who can see Ms ABC's "wall" gets this fed to them. Oh fun! Makes for some good reading. In reality Ms XYZ should have sent a private message to set up their rendezvous:

SEND a message. That's private.

 


Jim Schrempp is a sometimes freelance writer (only Vanity Press will publish his work) living in Saratoga, California. His writings have appeared on numerous pages on his own web site. The opinions expressed in this piece are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent those of anyone else (although Jim wishes more people shared his opinions)