Computers and Internet, Facebook

An Introduction to Facebook’s New List System

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Facebook has once again made a change to the user interface of its website. Now, friend lists can be accessed from the sidebar of the homepage. Before, it was hidden in the depths of drop down menus where everyday users would never find them.

Lists allow users friends to be categorized in order to share and see updates with certain groups of people. For example, one could have a list of their best friends, and another list for people they work with.

Facebook automatically generates some lists based on your and your friends’ profile information. Lists are automatically created for the family you’ve listed, the places you’ve worked, the schools you’ve gone to, and posts from the city your currently in. It also creates a “close friends” list and an “acquaintances” list to help users get started who are new to Facebook’s friend lists.

With this change, Facebook has brought a number of new options for groups.  To find these options, open the list by selecting it from the left sidebar on the homepage (if it’s not there, click more). In the top right corner of the page is a “Manage List” drop down menu. From here, users can manage the types of updates they want to see while viewing the list, merge the list with another one, or add and remove friends/pages from the list.

Merging is one of the new features available. It allows two lists to be brought into one. For example, Facebook automatically creates a “family” list. It’s convenient enough to merge the old family list a user may have already created with the new one Facebook made. (One thing I don’t like about it is that after merging, the old list is deleted. It would be ideal if a list could be merged into another but not be deleted afterward).

Facebook has also made a difference between being friends and being subscribed. Users can be friends with someone on Facebook, but not be subscribed (which means the user wouldn’t see their updates in his/her news feed). This is good for users who just need to add someone to keep in contact with them, not to know what is going on in their life.  By default, a user is automatically subscribed to “most updates” when they become friends. This can be changed by opening their profile and clicking on the “Subscribed” button to change options.

Facebook has, as I just mentioned, also added a few more options while viewing friends’ profiles. Users can set what types of updates they want to see from a particular friend  in their news feed right from their profile. For example, a user can choose to see status updates from a friend, but not the photos they post. To do this, click on the “subscribed” button on any user’s profile.

Their is now also an option to add friends to a list right from their profile. Previously it was hid in the background just as much as lists were. Now, it’s convenient to add friends to lists in order to better manage who users are sharing with.

With the introduction of these new options, Facebook has introduced a “restricted” list. This makes it easy to only share publicly visible information with certain friends. Users can find this list by clicking on “more” next to lists in the left hand sidebar of the homepage. This list can be used for people who users just need to keep in contact with, but don’t want to share their personal lives with.

Facebook has also updated lists so that while viewing a list, posting anything via the “publisher” by default will only be shared with that list. This alleviates the challenge of thinking about whose going to see what is posted when whats shared only applies to a certain group of friends.

A lot of these features are already present in Google +. It seems Facebook is updating itself because it saw where it was lacking.

Computers and Internet, Facebook

Facebook Subscribers

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It appears you can now have “subscribers” on Facebook much like followers on Twitter. Click on the “subscriptions” tab on your profile and click “Allow Subscriptions.” Posts with a privacy setting of public will be visible on your profile, and people can choose to subscribe to you (rather than adding you as a friend). You will be notified when a someone subscribes to you. You can always choose to block someone or turn off subscriptions.

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Google and Twitter = Glitter?

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Google has recently added a new feature to its search results. Users will now see if a someone they follow on Twitter has shared a link in the search results. It looks something like this:

A Google search result
Google tell's me that a Twitter account I follow has shared this link.

Google uses the links people share in your Twitter feed to provide users with better results. It can help a user decide which link to click on, based on the people they follow on Twitter. If I usually like content from a certain user, and I see that they shared it in a search result, it would be more likely that I click on a link if I see that user shared it as well.

Bing recently did something similar with Facebook, where a user will see if a friend has liked a link in the search results.

Computers and Internet, Facebook

Updated Dec 2013: Facebook Brings Back “Recent Activity” Options

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Where is it?: Recent Activity is the last box in the left-hand column on your timeline/profile. If you have no recent activity, you won’t see the box.

To hide activity: Click on the x next to a post in the box, and click on “Hide all [story type]…”

hiding activity

To unhide activity: First, click the pencil icon in the top right corner of the box, then click on hidden activity.

restoring hidden activity

Then a box like the one below should appear, Click the “x” next to the things you want to restore to your Recent Activity.

hidden acitivity menu

That’s it!
Update 7 (December 15, 2013): With the addition of Facebook’s “Following” button on people’s profiles, some of the information below has changed. The below is outdated, but kept for reference

Event Activity Not Showing Up Under Recent Activity on Timeline: Report It

Update 6 (January 4, 2012): Some users are reporting that some of their recent activity is no longer showing up, like comments on other friends’ posts or event activity on Facebook Timeline. It appears Facebook has now removed the option to display such stories at all on Timeline.  Some users (and I’ve tested myself now) cannot unhide their Event activity if they had hidden it in the past. From now on, stories such as commenting and event activity will appear in the News Feed and Ticker based on your friends’ subscriptions to you.

For example, if you go to a friend’s Timeline, you will not be able to see whose posts they have commented on recently. If you want to find out, you would have to go to Subscribed (at the top) and check “Comments and Likes.” From then on, whenever that friend likes or comments on something, it will appear in the Ticker (above the chat bar on the right side). Facebook recently removed the option to choose whose comments/likes you would see in the News Ticker.

It does not look like Facebook will ever restore commenting/event activity to Timeline. There is a glitch with Event activity that has yet to be fixed… Report It

Edit: I have been doing some testing and look at this:

Event Activity
Event stories do not appear under Recent Activity in the old profile…

And after switching to the new profile….

It seems it works now…

Alright, so event activity should appear on the timeline. We clearly have a problem now….

Update 5 (November 6, 2011): If you are using Facebook timeline, you can edit which types of updates you’ve hidden by clicking on the pencil icon to the right of the Recent Activity box as shown below

View Hidden Activity by clicking on the pencil icon and then selecting “Hidden Activity…” from the drop down list.

If you are looking to hide activity, simply click the “x” that appears when you hover over a recent activity story and click “Hide Similar Activity from Timeline.”

To hide recent activity stories of one type, click on the “x” that appears when you hover over a post and select “Hide Similar Activity from Timeline” in the drop down list.

Update 4: Facebook has brought back the Edit Options link at the bottom of my wall. If you have accidentally hid any type of activity on your wall, you can now un-hide it by going to the bottom of your wall, clicking on Edit Options, and clicking the “x” next to the type of story you want to un-hide. Note that the Edit Options link may take a while to propagate to all users once again.

Update 3: Speculation. Some users had reported that some links, such as YouTube videos, they were sharing did not appear on their wall, only on their news feed. These users had also reported that they had clicked on “hide all comment activity.” I believe that there might have been a bug that caused links to disappear when a person hid their comment activity. Facebook has most likely taken the recent activity options off for now while they sort out this bug and hopefully it will be back up soon. Can anyone confirm that they were not able to see their links they had shared after they hid all comment activity? Comment below

Original Post: It looks like Facebook has begun to roll out the “Recent Activity” options to its users. Facebook removed these options and defaulted all recent activity to “on” back in December of 2009. Take a look at what I found earlier this evening:

Facebook "Recent Activity" Settings
An option is now listed that allows you to hide all likes.

“Recent Activity” shows recent comments users have made on posts, and recent pages they have liked, as well as public events users are attending and other things. Back in December 2009, Facebook, somehow, decided that it would be always on, and if a user didn’t want a post to show up, they would have to manually remove it each time.

These settings bring more privacy back to Facebook! If a user comments on a friend’s status, and that status was set to friends of friends, by default, all* the user’s friends would see that they commented on that friend’s status, regardless of friendship, in their news feed. Now, users can set it up so that their comments aren’t shown in their recent activity.

I appreciate Facebook bringing back this option. It was annoying to have to go into my wall and remove posts that I didn’t want to show up in my friends’ news feeds.

To unhide a certain type of “recent activity” story on your wall, scroll to the bottom of the wall, click on Edit Options, and click the “x” next to the type of story you want to unhide.

This post has been formatted from its original version. Updates 1 & 2 have been edited into the story/removed.

*Note: Not all users are guaranteed to see the post, depending on each individual’s news feed settings.  

Computers and Internet

Facebook Scams Follow-up

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about how to avoid Facebook scams. What I failed to mention is what to do if you have been affected by a Facebook scam.

In most cases, when you’re affected by a Facebook scam, some posts could appear on your profile, or be sent to others through chat and other things. The first thing to do would be to remove any apps you accidentally “allowed” to post to your profile. To do this, go to Account, located in the upper right corner of each Facebook page, and click on Privacy Settings in the drop down list. On that page, you should see an “Apps and Websites” section. Click “Edit Settings” under that section. On that page, you’ll have the option to remove spammy or unwanted apps. Do that, and remove any apps you don’t remember adding. Note, some apps are cleverly named to think they are related to a certain feature of Facebook. For example, this past week I found an example of such an app. It was called “Chat.” However, the app actually sent spam messages and then when a user who received that message clicked on the link, it would ask them to authourize that fake “Chat” app to access Facebook Chat, which  in turn sent the same link to all their friends, and so the chain continues. You should remove any apps there named “Chat” or anything similar (“Photos”, “Messages” etc) because these features do not show up in the Apps section. Instead, they are integrated with Facebook (You can’t remove the actual “Photo” app, etc).

Another good idea is to change your password. I’ve seen some users on Facebook asking about a message apparently sent from Facebook. It told the user was engaging in abusive behaviour and needed the user to confirm their login details. This led them to a fake app that looks like an official page (to those who don’t know what to look for) and asks them for their login details, which are then sent to the hacker who uses the login details to take over the account or what not.

If the hacker changed your login details, you should have been sent an email saying that they were changed. Clicking the link starts a verification process to verify that the account belongs to you.

Computers and Internet

Facebook Scams

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So, I’ve written about this before as a note on my Facebook account, but I’ve decided to write about it again here.

Scams are everywhere on Facebook. Be careful what you click on. Here are an example of a few of the current scams on Facebook and what you should look out for.

Facebook Pages Scams:

If you’re on Facebook, you may sometimes see a story in your news feed that a few of your friends have liked a Facebook page. The page usually has a title like “I can’t believe what this girl did… etc.” When you open the page, you are greeted with a message to like the page in order to see the content.

From here, things can go downhill.

You may be asked to click on a number of boxes in order to see the content. What this is really doing is secretly posting an update to your wall and spamming your friends’ news feeds. In turn, your friends do the same and spam their friends as well.

You may also be asked to click on a link, which takes you to an external website and asks you to fill out a survey in order to see the content. At the end of the survey, you are asked to enter their mobile phone number. This signs you up for a premium text messaging service, and charges you a fee (about $2) per message received. This money ends up going to the scammers.

Facebook Profile Views Scam:

An example of a false post
You may see a post similar to this claiming you can see who has viewed your profile.

You may see posts in your news feed these days from a friend claiming they can see who has viewed their profile. The rules for making applications on Facebook states that it is illegal to make an app that says it tracks how many views a profile has, and it is technically impossible for an application to do this. Facebook does not allow applications to track who views a user’s profile. These applications spam friends and return false results. Don’t click on these links. They also lead to more surveys which generate the developers money and spam your friends with these links.

That’s all I have to say for now. Be careful what you click on.

For a follow-up post on this topic, click here

Computers and Internet

What a Forwarded Email Should Look Like!

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I opened a forwarded email from a friend the other day, and to my horror, saw this:

A Screenshot
I see a lot of email addresses, but not a lot of the actual message.

I was greeted by a long list of email addresses, before actually getting to what the message was about. Before forwarding a message, some formating needs to be done.

It’s important to check the message is true before passing it along. A site I use is called Snopes.com. Users can search for email messages they’ve received and check whether they are true or not true at all. In this case, one of the people who received this message had added a message saying that they had verified that it was true and provided a link.

After verifying the message, remove those email addresses from the message and format the message to look a little nicer. Imagine if you were the one composing the message and sending it to your friends. How would you like it to look when they got it?

When it’s time to select people to forward the message to, look for a “Bcc” option (which stands for “blind carbon copy”), instead of using the “To” field. This way, recipients won’t see who else got the message and be able to steal the sender’s friends’ email addresses. Usually, there is a link to click that says “Show Bcc” located near the “To” box in order to see the box to add users to it. When a user clicks on “Bcc” in most cases, it will open a list of contacts that can be selected to be added to that box.

Here is what the email should have looked like when I received it.

Another screenshot.
What a forwarded email should look like.

As seen above, the email looks much nicer and I don’t have to scroll down for eternity to find the message.

P.S. Sometimes, I’ll get a message with a video attachment. This clogs up my inbox and space on my computer (if using a computer-based email client). Instead, find the video on YouTube and post a link to it instead.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t use Hotmail. I use GMail!