Two Nifty Little Tricks, Facebook, and You.

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Some things are so easy, provided we know about them. We all want to “clean up” our busy social lives on Facebook sometimes, right? Here are two ways to accomplish just that; both are optional of course.

Too many pages? There, there now, we all get carried away sometimes. Sure, you can like both Aerosmith and Robotic Dancer’s Monthly, but oh, “Things My Awfully Cute Terrier Says” has got to go and most of those other pages too. But what if you wanted to get rid of ALL of them with little more than a wave of your magic wand?

In Timeline, start off on your wall (click on your name on the top to get there).
Just under your cover picture, click on the box where it says Likes. Once you’re on the page where your likes are, click on edit in the top right. You’ll see the names of ALL your likes by category. The first thing I see is “Music”; you probably see that too.

For each category, simply click on the first page where you’d like to start deleting and hold down the Delete Key and the pages will delete one by one. You can stop at any time and start the process over elsewhere in the category; maybe there’s a few you’d like to keep after all? When done, click on the big blue button that says Save Changes just below that section. You DO have to do this for each category.

We've certainly cleaned up our stream now, haven’t we? Ready to clean it up a little more? Are there people that annoy you to tears to the point where you’d like to cast a spell on them or people you really, really, really want to hear from more often? You can easily make modifications in regards to both of these situations and customize your stream a bit more to your liking.

Too many posts from Ned Painintherear? If you’re using Timeline, go to his wall and click on Subscribe, just under their cover photo, and directly to the right of Friends. A pull down gives you lots of options. The default is “Most Updates”, with the other choices being “All Updates” and the one you’d likely choose for Ned, “Only Important”.  There’s also a list of the types of posts as well. Here’s where you can shut off your friend’s Farmville posts or those friends that post music videos non-stop. Plenty of options for customizing what you see!

You DO have to go to each of your friend’s walls and make the changes for each individual friend. Unfortunately, there’s no time saving tactics here.
Ah, but the results! See what YOU want to see instead of having Facebook pick those posts that THEY feel are important enough to be “most updates”.

Prest-o change-o! Did that make your day just a little bit better?

How to Make Facebook Look “Old” Again

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It’s obvious. Most of us are not happy campers with the new, improved Facebook; in particular, the ticker and top stories features. Yeah, I understand it’s hard to leave your comfort zone but I’m siding with all of you; they’ve overdone it this time.

So some of us are frantically trying every suggestion that comes our way. Including me. I’ve found what I think may be the best one.

I created a list called “Whole Wide World”. You may want to call yours “News Feed”. I have included EVERYONE. I took each and every friend and added them to it. Painful because it can take a while to do. If you want to create a list with all or most of your friends here’s how:

• On the home page, place your cursor just to the right of where it says Lists on the left.

When the word more appears in blue, click on it.

• Select “Create a List”
• Add a bunch of friends to it
• Click done. Now click on the name of the new list of the left side. Suggestions of who to add should appear over on the right. Go through all those friends and add them to the list. This is a much quicker way to add them! When that’s exhausted…
• Click on the upper right where it says “Manage Lists” and add a few more friends by clicking on them. If they initially turn blue, just click on them again.
• Click done, click on the list name on the left and add the suggestions
• Working back and forth like this will get the list created a bit faster, especially if you have a lot of friends (say 300 or more).
• Under Manage Lists, you can control which updates you’d like to see. This is where you can unclick games if you’re not interested in them. The choices are:

o Status Updates
o Photos
o Games
o Comments and Likes
o Other Activity (this includes announcements of friends making new friends)

Now that the list is created with all of your friend feeds, it’s important to add favorite pages as well.
• Under Manage Lists, select Add/Remove Friends.
• Once the window opens with your friends, click on the down arrow in the upper left and switch to pages.
• Add pages you want to include in your list. Perhaps you want all of them? Hmmm…could be a good time to clean up all those lists you are on!
• Click done when you are done. This time, you really can’t do the go back and forth with suggestions. Sorry, it only works with friends.

Now you are done!

For now, this seems to be the way to control what you want to see. I also suggest that going to the wall of your favorite friends and under Subscribe, click on the option for all updates. Again, you have control here. Facebook assumes that you want “most updates” and has made that the default.

One thing I’ve noticed since I created my “Whole Wide World” list. I’m getting emails with additional comments from everyone else that has commented after me on a post. Not certain this is caused by the new list though. More work to be done!
One more thing. If you want to remove the ticker click here for Chrome users and here for Firefox. The Firefox addon requires a reboot after installing.

Facebook is a Square Over Circles; Hello Lists!

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Is this the start of ease of “segmented” information for users of Facebook?  Changes are brewing with some new features just announced in regards to lists. It certainly does seem like a follow the leader approach in regards to this revamp, and surprise, the “leader” is Google+, which boasts a fraction of the users that Facebook has. Could this be the start of a social network arena shakeup?


Sounds like Facebook may be feeling a bit threatened. Do you think they’re trolling the internet, getting a read on what folks like and don’t like about Google+? If you thought “yes”, then you’re probably right. That’s my gut feeling too.


So what has Facebook done? Simply put, they’ve made the struggle with lists less intense. After hearing complaints and allowing us to be subjected to the frustrations of everyone we know for so long, it’s about time.  The changes come not that long after they made some tweaks to making privacy settings more obvious to the not-so-savvy Facebook user.


Here’s the low down on what’s been done with new, improved lists:


• Facebook has made it easier to add people to lists. Now I haven’t seen this feature in action yet, but I suspect that it’s as easy as dragging someone into a circle when adding in Google+.


• Lists that are automatically created for location, work, family, and school. Dubbed “Smart Lists” by Facebook.


• The ability to segment your friends based on how well you know them. Interestingly enough, this is how I’ve approached my Google+ circle methodology. But that’s another story. The important thing here is that you’ll be able to list and see all posts, including photos within Close Friends and Acquantances lists.


• Facebook has made this new feature optional, similar to what they’ve done with the recently announced “reduced email”. Wow! Now we have choices too!


If you don't have them yet, you soon will; the changes are rolling out this week. All I can say is …thank you Google+. Without you, this update never would have happened. However, it’s a shame that the consumer’s voice isn’t heard until a potential threat comes along.