3 Things Facebook Has Done Right
If you've talked to me about social media, you'd know how I feel about Facebook - not a huge fan. Not even a little fan. However I'm a fan of what it can do for a business as a complement to marketing efforts but as a personal user? It's not been great.
But I am not going to get into the aspects of Facebook I don't like because they're all personal reasons. There are some redeeming factors to using Facebook (for both personal and business needs) that I appreciate and these are little functions that have been added over time.
Unfollow Post
Bear in mind, I've turned off email notifications. I'm a huge fan of Inbox Zero and, really, ANYTHING zero because that little red indicator with the number in it drives me nuts. We all get notifications when someone comments after we have on a friend's post and when your friends have thousands of friends, many of whom comment a lot, your notification numbers can skyrocket.
The Unfollow Post option is awesome: it lets you leave the conversation, so to speak, and you won't see anymore notifications from your friends' friends. Now, if you're tagged in someone's response or if someone likes your comment, then you'll be notified but once you choose to unfollow that post, you won't see anymore responses.
Here's how you do it: Click on your notification in the top left corner of the page (the one with the red number on it) and in the pull-down list, select the conversation you've received yet another notification for. That will pull up that post. Then just click Unfollow Post.
There you go. Speaking of being able to leave a conversation, the next feature I like is the ability to stop being on the receiving end of a bunch of "reply all" messages.
Leave The Conversation
Say you get a mass message on Facebook. By mass I mean upwards of 50 or more people. And each person just replies without thinking. Even getting 20 replies would be annoying, unless you have a lot of time and you like reading through every "yay that's great!", "Ok" or whatever response each person decides to leave not realizing that everybody else on the list sees it too. It's nobody's fault that Facebook doesn't have a "Reply only to author" option. However, it does have mute, leave and delete conversation options that you should use if the message was of no interest to you, or if you're done hearing what complete strangers have to say.
At the top right of your message window is "Actions." Click on that to show the menu. Muting means you won't hear anything else from them but you're still part of the conversation. Leaving means you won't see anything else, you can't check back later on, you're just done with the conversation. It's like leaving a room. Deleting is deleting.
Peace out.
The next one's an oldie but goodie:
Show In News Feed
Have an oversensitive yet over-sharey friend who tracks every person who is a friend and who unfriends them? Afraid of incurring their wrath? Hide them. You don't have to unfriend them, but you sure as hell don't have to see another preachy rant again (or another ultrasound, or another picture of their child or anything, really!) and you can get on with a timeline that shows only updates from people you are interested in hearing from.
Go to the post from that friend and hover your cursor over their name. This will pop up:
Just remove the check mark by "Show in news feed" by clicking on it and voila, no more nonsense from said friend.
Let us not forget that Facebook is FREE to use. No one's making you use it, no one's making you post all your pictures on there either so when they change privacy settings, you just have to make the most of it and move on or quit Facebook. That said, how do you control what you see on Facebook and how do you keep yourself from getting frustrated with it?
