In talking with various business relationships I have who have gotten into social networking sites like Facebook recently, one common series of complaints involves all of the 'fluff' that can be found there. Invites to multiple games each day; their home page feed littered with updates from these same games, or other apps they simply are not interested in. One worry of mine, personally is that these complaints seem to be of the, "if I can't figure out this stuff, I'll probably stop using Social Networking altogether" variety.
So I've been planning a simple blog post to detail some of the tools Facebook provides to help here. But then today, I came across a Blog challenge from Tim Ford, otherwise known as the SQL Agent Man (link). The Blog entry was titled, "Whose Blog Is It Anyway?" (link) and the challenge is inspired by the game "Scenes From a Hat" from the improv show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". I considered starting over and writing something else but then I thought to myself, I've started, so I'll finish!
Clean Up Your Home Page Feed
The Home Feeds on Facebook are where you can see what is going on with all of your friends; their status updates, photos, notes/blog posts, who they've connected with and more. Unfortunately, that 'more' might include their latest activity on the "Live Nude Cats" Facebook game, or who knows what. Every time you turn around, it seems someone has created some great new Facebook game. By using some magical tool, library or bong, it seems anyone with a silly idea can introduce us to wars of the Mafia or online pets you can feed, house, clothe (???) and provide medical care for while on Facebook.
My cousin's feed recently shared about his new pony in some FB game; He gets to take care of it all online, and I get near-hourly updates about it in my feed! How great. But it seems like he has to spend a lot of time taking care of that pony online. I know he's always wanted one, but as soon as he looks down, he's going to be very sad about the pony, because his FB game will be updating us all on how it's died of some rare veterinary disease, or something. I want to get my cousin's Facebook updates - I just don't want to see his pet updates, or anyone else's pet updates, either.
To start with, when I see an update I don't like, I move my mouse to the right, top side of the update until I see the 'Hide' button appear. I can hide either the whole application (no matter who is using it), or that single friend (no matter what they are doing). If I hide the friend, I can only see their updates by going to their profile directly. For some friends, that's what I do. But for most games, I choose to block the app instead.
When you click on 'Hide', you'll see an option to ignore the person, or to cancel. If the update in question is an external Facebook app, you'll see the option to hide that as well. You can not hide the native, basic Facebook functions like status updates. So you can click on the user's name if you like, or the application itself, if you prefer.
Knowing this tip alone will make your Facebook experience much cleaner!
Stop Being Invited Repeatedly to the Same Parties
Do you keep getting invitations for the same games or apps, from multiple people (or even repeatedly from the same person?) The way most Facebook third-party apps work, they push their users to invite absolutely all of their friends, and make it easy to do so. But Facebook lets you not only decline an invitation, but prevent getting those invitations ever again.
Just like the updates in your feed, you have the option here of blocking an entire application, no matter from whom, or blocking all invites from a particular friend.
But you have to look closely; Do not simply click on the big "Ignore" button! Look at the two links down below. One blocks the application itself, while the other will cause you to ignore all invites from that friend, no matter from what application.
Keep Your Notifications More Relevant
Applications that your friends use can also send you 'notifications'. I don't mean the notifications that Facebook sends via e-mail (which you can manage here), but the notifications that show up in Facebook itself. This lets you see updates to friends' status if, for example, you have 'liked' or commented on them. But I don't like seeing the notifications about things like a friend filling out some survey in some app. Now in this case, you don't have an option to block the friend or the app; If you block here, you are blocking the app entirely. You do get a prompt first, though.
When viewing the list of notifications, move your mouse toward the top-right of that entry, and a big X will appear. Click that to get the option to block the app from sending you future notifications.
Clean Up Your Profile Wall
One of my least-favorite things is that apps/games your friends use may be able to post updates on your wall. A friend might send you a 'gift' of some sort, like this starfish I got via a friend's app, "My Aquarium":
Mousing toward the right, I can click on 'Remove', and am presented with options again. This time, my only options are to cancel, or delete this post. You don't have an option to block all updates from that app, or that friend.
If you had a friend who was constantly causing updates on your Facebook profile that you have to block, that's probably a good cause to remove someone as a friend entirely. I still wish there was more functionality here, though.
Don't Worry Too Much About Upsetting Your Fans
In this day and age, everyone's worried about or upsetting someone. Social Media is just one of the latest ways that make it easy to do so, but certainly we, as humankind, have been offending in various ways since before we got the gift of communication. When people 'follow' or 'friend' us on a Social Media site, it gives them some small feeling of ownership of some small part of our lives; they have become part of our story.
The writers of stories have wrestled with how their fans will react to the latest installment ever since their fans have had the means to comment back. Fans begin to take things that happen to the characters they have grown to love seriously. As a result, some creators of fiction sometimes try to walk a fine line between staying true to their story or the characters, and how the fans might react. Just ask George "Let’s Have Padme Die Of A Broken Heart Instead Of Anakin Crushing Her To Death" Lucas.
But Facebook tries hard to shield you from making your blocking too obvious. Typically, your friends will get no notification at all regarding your blocking of their apps, or their invites. You will simply no longer show up on the list of possible persons to be invited in the future. Even if you un-friend someone, there is no automatic notification from Facebook about that fact. Your friend may notice just by virtue of you being missing, but... nothing's perfect!
Hopefully, these tips will help make your Facebook experience a little more clean for you. If you know of any other ways, feel free to contact me on Facebook or Twitter and let me know!