A lot of folks are frustrated with Facebook because of all the “What mafia farmer are you?” crap. Here’s how to get rid of it.
1) Facebook Lite
Bid ALL applications adieu. Go to http://lite.facebook.com and you won’t see any applications. It’s not a permanent thing - if you go to http://facebook.com, you’ll see everything as normal. But whenever you want to skip the ap crap, Facebook lite awaits.
2) Hide certain applications and people.
If you put your mouse over the top right corner of any item in your news feed (status updates, photos, application updates, etc) you will see a “hide” button appear, which gives you the option to a) handpick the most annoying aps and keep them out of your feed (Mafiayofarmvillestreetopolis) or b) handpick the most annoying people who you just can’t bring yourself to delete (mom!) and keep them out of your feed.
3) Keep your applications, but hide the notification pop-ups.
You know those little numbers that pop up in the bottom right corner of your profile? Those are notifications. And depending on what applications you have sending you notifications, they can get really annoying. Click the sign post in the bottom right corner of Facebook and click the “x” in the top right corner of every ap you no longer want notification for.
4) Stop the e-mail
I can’t even imagine getting emails everytime someone shoots me or harvests me or whatever on any of these applications. If you ARE getting these e-mails… dear God… go to “settings” in the top right of Facebook, click the “notifications” tab and scroll down and uncheck the heck out of those aps.
5) Lists, lists, lists
If you haven’t set up lists, or at least ONE list of your FAVORITE Facebook friends, your missing out on filtering out the noise to focus in on who matters. “Lists” let you narrow down specific categories of people that you want to be able to browse at a given time - without blocking everyone else all the time, like hiding people (2) does. From your home page click “more” in the left sidebar and then “create new list” from the expanded menu. I love my lists. (Added thanks to comments from Ricardo and Dave.)
What are your tips for making Facebook suck less?
Bryan Cristina says:
Thanks for the tips. I knew you could hide people but didn’t know you could hide just the apps.
I think apps are ridiculous. I’m tired of having some message but then to read it I have to install the app. And another app. And another. Enough with the apps.
Yayyyy you’re a farmer. Leave me alone. And no, I will not help you assassinate a public figure.
This is actually quite a great tip. I cleaned out horoscopes, farmville, fishworld, horoscopes x2, and whatever else. Now I don’t have to know how much time my friends waste.
Oct 21, 2009, 3:53 pmDave says:
Another way to hide people is to create a list of only the people you want to see every day - and move that list to the top of the left sidebar. That makes it your default view of your friends. Everyone else only appears if I click on the “everyone list”. (And certain people only appear if I click on the “WTF who is this again?” list.)
So, while I have 100’s of friends because I’m so damn popular, only about 30 of them are in my default list. (Yes, you are one of them. You ALL are! xo, mmm hmm.) I pay attention to 30 movers and shakers every day, and other friends I check on less often.
I didn’t know about lite.facebook. Thanks for the tip!
Oct 21, 2009, 4:55 pmCheryl says:
Great point, David! I have a list of about 200 people who I consider my friends and closest professional network, and those are the people who I check up on the most - I have something ridiculous like 1,300 friends.
Oct 21, 2009, 4:58 pmRicardo Bueno says:
I group people into lists (I love lists). This lets me filter through noise much better. There’s one list in particular that I keep and it’s called a “People to Meet List”. I attend a lot of events locally and I usually browse through this list before heading out to an event to get the skinny on people and what’s going on in their life so that when I get there, I have something to say ya know…
Oct 21, 2009, 1:19 am