How to use facebook without it using you – 6 tips to enjoy it again

Fastbook useful or a pain in the butt?

I am a huge fan of facebook but I would like to smack the owners.

If any of you are have already joined me on facebook you might have noticed that my status is set to married. This is quite funny since me getting married is about as likely as bigfoot being discovered flying a UFO. Why would I do this? Because facebook is as obnoxious as it is useful. If my status is set to single I get constant highly distracting singles advertising on the advertising bar, photo-shopped pictures of women with falsely swollen breasts to tempt my normally productive eyes.

Did it work? Did my married status shut off the boobies? Well kinda, I still get the annoying “find out who just searched for you!” along the typical busty teenager (yeah right, she was searching for me). All I can say is it cut it down a bit.

It appears that you can remove the ads with the little X in the corner of each but no amount of clicking on them solves the problem. (Do you girls have this problem too?)  Sorry to say but Facebook’s ad campaign is downright horrible. However, this is my only beef with facebook and with a few tweaks now FB works the way I want it to! Here are some of my major tweaks to make Facebook fun again.

1. Facebook’s little X and deleting applications in the notification bar

This alone saved facebook for me. You know that horribly annoying announcement bar on the bottom right hand corner? When you click on it shows you how many hearts someone has blown at you? Or what superhero you might be? Granted there is some useful information here but if you don’t know this trick the notification bar is going to be FULL of garbage applications. This is incredibly easy to remove and now I have no problems.

first you go the bottom right hand corner of you facebook page and bring up all of the notifications. Notice the one at top is an application? and since I am really not into the music quiz I am going to get rid of it by clicking on the X to the right of this annoying app!

After you have clicked on it a new dialogue box comes up. It is a bit hard to see but the far left button is “hide all” click on that and you will never see that app again!

Note: if you have a lot of these it might take about a week to weed all the annoying apps out but once gone they are gone forever.

2. Changing your email settings in facebook

When I first started using facebook I noticed it would notify me over EVERYTHING. Once two old girlfriends started to comment on a photo of me and turned it into a LONG conversation. When I checked my email I had… NO JOKE… 50 emails saying that someone had commented on a photo, not okay… Now I only allow facebook to email me when I receive a message in facebook. That is all I allow it to do. To set this up go to settings and click on account settings.

Now to change your email updates click on Notifications and deselect EVERYTHING, except sends me a message, I also left birthday reminders.

3. Hiding people and apps on the main page

Another great tweak is being able to hide people and apps on your main page. So when your buddy Chris becomes a bejeweled superstar you can show him how little you give a damn and remove the application off your page. Not only that but if there is someone that you really don’t want to listen to, all you have to do is… click on the hide button on the right hand side of their update and BYE BYE forever. No more obnoxious status updates from that person anymore!

In the case below I just selected the application to hide, notice I didn’t select my sister’s name, (Sorry Amy didn’t mean to use you as an example!)

4. Blocking people from seeing you on facebook chat

I work a lot on the computer and I like to keep facebook running. If this is the case the last thing I want is for someone to send me an instant message on facebook. There are a few people that I don’t mind breaking my concentration for but a lot of people are just time wasters and I don’t mind hiding from them.

To hide your online status from the time vampires all you need do is create a group at the bottom right hand corner. Mine is called invisible and in this group I put all the people that I don’t want to see my online status.

First type in a new list name. Mine is already made. After it is created I click on the small word edit to the right of the name invisible.

After clicking the word edit you can add people to this list with the below box. Once all the really chatty people are selected you can click on the green toggle switch to the right of the invisible group and turn off the online status. The short cut to all of this is just click on chat and to turn your status to offline. I would do this but there is a few people I would like to chat with.

5. Blocking people forever on facebook

I am sure you will someday have some reason to remove someone from your facebook but only unfriending still allows them to see your photos and status through mutual friends, blocking them removes all links to you everywhere. I am amazed that I actually had to do this but it seemed necessary for my own peace of mind. To block someone you go to settings and click on privacy.

Now you will see the block section below to the bottom right of the page. All you have to do is enter in the persons name or email and they won’t be able to find you. They probably will never know you blocked them and if you change your mind you can reverse this in the same place.

6. Hiding unappealing tagged photos in facebook

Ironically the same person I had to block was tagging a tremendous amount of photos of me that I really didn’t want on the net. Some were unflattering but the majority were just ridiculous. This person kept tagging me in photos that had only a scrap of my DNA showing; often I would just have an ear tagged or my backside. This was just silliness and having 50 useless photos of me for my family and readers to see was just not cool. Originally I tried to un-tag myself but it was too time consuming. To fix the problem permanently I went into settings and made it so that only I could see my tagged photos. This gave me the peace of mind I needed and this nutter could tag away.

To change this first go to settings and select privacy, now click on profile

next you will see a few drop down menus, select the one that says photos tagged of you and select customize.

Automatically a selection box will come up, the default is everyone on facebook, change this to only me and hit okay. Now only you will be the one able to view the embarrassing photos that other people tag of you!

I know I am a little off topic here but I think facebook is a fantastic place for dating. All you have to do is tweak it a little bit to enjoy it once again.

Hope this helps!

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