Tag Archives: Facebook

Facebook Fail – Five things that should be changed

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Facebook needs to change in order to remain popular…and current.

Facebook’s popularity is fading fast, at least that’s what the media would have us believe. We tend to agree, basically because we don’t see a whole lot of activity there these days. Except for fan pages, it seems that anyone who wanted to join up has already done so. Fan pages abound, and yes we have one, but we don’t see a huge increase in the numbers of personal profiles. What will Facebook look like in ten years? We don’t have any idea but if it’s going to even exist at that time, here’s some changes they could make.

1. Allow private messages on posts – Renren.com, the Chinese version of Facebook, lets users make private comments on anything that anyone else posts. When you say something on Facebook, the world sees it. You’d think that China, because of its supposed personal restrictions wouldn’t offer something like this but they do.

2. Get rid of some of the ads – Facebook has sold out, in our opinion, forcing ads on their users. Not only do we see them on the sidebar, which we’re used to, we now see them in the middle of our newsfeed. Hell, we even see suggested ads, as if we’d shout, “Yeah Facebook! That’s a cool Buick ad right in the middle of my Timeline!”

3. Stop asking for personal information – We know where we live, where we went to school, where we work or used to work…why is that important to Facebook? The tendency now is to simply lie about all of this. Why not? It’s not as if we’re going to get something out of revealing our private information, right? Facebook gets something out of it, not its users.

4. Let us like something but don’t tell the world about it – This one change would mean the world to almost every Facebook user. Liking a photo or a comment isn’t always something we want to share, is it? As long as the original poster knows we like something, why does every single person who can see that post have to know? Can you imagine how this affects teens? High school is tough enough without the added pressure of everyone knowing that someone liked someone’s photo.

5. Stop with the repetition of posts – There is no reason to repeat the same post endlessly in the newsfeed, is there? We get a notice if there is activity on something that we’ve interacted with so why does Facebook persist in showing us the same post ten times or more as we scroll down the newsfeed? Sure, we can hide the story but why do we have to interact with something we don’t want to see anyway. (We actually know why this is. Facebook is logging our ‘hides’ in order to tune the different types of ads that they put on our main page.)

Last but not least, and it’s not one of the five main points that we’d like to see changed, but Facebook does need a thumbs down icon, don’t you think? Not ‘liking’ something is not the same as ‘not liking’ it. We’ve all seen comments and opinions that we really disagree with so let us, darn it!

OK, that’s our list, what’s yours? Maybe we missed some key things here. Let us know. Better yet, let us know on your very own Facebook page. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

As always, thanks for reading!

The Facebook Survey – Did they expect us to be polite?

Last week we got a notice from Facebook about a survey asking about our experience with News Feed. Hmmm, we thought. This could be interesting. Here’s how we responded:

1.

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We hate surveys, don’t you? 1-2 minutes? Oh OK. Let’s do it.

2.

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Is anyone ‘completely satisfied’ with anything?

3.

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News Feed has changed. So has our attitude towards it.

4.

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Facebook chooses the stories. How interesting could it be?

5.

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Now it’s all ads, even ads with sound. Booo!

6.

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We like the new look, not the new News Feed.

7.

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You point, you click, what’s easy or hard about that?

8.

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The News Feed should be about people you interact with, not ads or virtual strangers.

9.

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Did they even have to ask?

10. Finally, our thoughts:

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Our thoughts. What do you think?

 

That’s it, a very short survey but you just know that Facebook is testing us for even more ads than before. We think they are gauging our reactions to the increasing number of ads that are already spoiling our Facebook experience. Have you noticed that they are using ads with sounds recently? That’s a jarring experience if you’re listening to music. There should be a way to opt-out of these ads but, of course, there isn’t.

Facebook is on a downward spiral, we think. Since the IPO, they are selling their users out to ads and data mining every bit of information they can and, we suspect, selling it all to the corporate world. It’s up to you to decide if you want to be part of it. Comments are welcome.

Thanks for reading! Like us on Facebook and you can keep up with our posts and tech tips: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Perfect Facebook Profile (Part 3) – Hide your friend list

Day three of creating a totally private Facebook profile. By the end of this week, anyone who manages to find you on Facebook won’t be able to discover much about you, certainly no more than the bare minimum that Facebook says you have to reveal. Today, we’re going to lock up your friend list, at least as tight as you can. Remember that you cannot hide mutual friends that you have with someone.

Theory: Ask yourself why any of your friends need to know who else you are friends with. Think about it and then you can set your privacy accordingly. If you have friends that you don’t know very well, keep them from knowing who else  you know. If you have guys who raid your list of friends for leads, you know what we mean, you can stymie them easily.

1. Short and sweet, head to your own Timeline by clicking on your name up on the top left.

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Click on Friends to start the journey.

2. Click on the word Friends.

3. Up on the top right, click on the pencil icon and choose ‘edit privacy’.

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Click the pencil.
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Choose ‘Edit privacy’.

 

4. In the box that opens, make your selections carefully. You can choose ‘Only me’ or any number of other options. If you’ve made a list of acquaintances, you can keep your friend list away from them, for instance.

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Lots of choices here. Make your choice carefully.

5. Ideally, this is what we’d like to see:

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No one else really needs to see your friend list, do they? Why?

6. If you want some friends to see your list, you can tune your privacy in quite a few ways. Friends of friends? Specific people or lists?

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It doesn’t have to be complicated. That’s why we prefer the ‘Only me’ setting.

 

Finally, please remember that you can’t hide your mutual friends. Facebook does not allow that. We can see how that might be a problem for some teen users, but that’s the way it is.

Thanks for reading! Let us know if you have comments, problems, questions or suggestions. We’re very approachable. Like us on Facebook and you’ll get some good karma! Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook.

 

Facebook – Get your Likes back

Here’s a short post on getting your Facebook Likes back. We’ll show you how to sort out the different sections that appear when someone checks out your profile.

1. Head to your own Timeline and look for the words ‘Update Info’.

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Click on Update Info.

2. Once you click Update Info, look over on the right for the icon of a pencil.

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The word Edit appears when you hover over the icon. Click it.

 

3. Even if you don’t want to edit anything, click the icon and you’ll get this menu. Click ‘Edit Sections’ when you see it:

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Click Edit Sections.

4. Up pops a list of all of the sections that you can choose to show or hide. Notice that three sections can’t be hidden: About, Photos and Friends are all permanent. You can, however, hide parts of these sections as we’ve told you before. You can hide your full Friend list, for instance, but you cannot hide any mutual friends that you might have with someone who sees your profile.

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Pick the ones you want to show or hide.

5. Finally, don’t forget to click Save to make your changes take effect.

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Click Save and you’re done.

 

That’s it. Your list will vary from ours, of course. The main sections will be the same but you won’t have Spotify, probably, but you might have ones that are not on our list.

Thanks for reading! Hey, Like our Facebook page and we’ll like you! Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook.