Tag Archives: Facebook Secrets

Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Timeline

Facebook Likes – The Ultimate Guide – Part Two

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Let’s take a look at our Facebook Likes and see what we can do with them. When someone visits you on Facebook, they see your timeline, of course. What we’re going to do is take a look at what they see, not what you see. You can hide things from your friends but you can’t hide things from yourself. (That’s actually quite a pithy statement, isn’t it?)

Tip: To get the most out of our articles, set yourself up with another Facebook account. Do that now. Add yourself as a friend and open the new account in another browser (not the same browser you are using now). Go to your timeline in your new profile where you are a friend and get used to using the refresh button to see what affect the changes you make on your other profile have as your friends see it. You are editing one account in one browser and checking out the results in another account that is open in another browser. Get it? Yes, you can use the ‘view as’ button but that isn’t as fast as using a separate Facebook profile.

Here is a perfect example of what we’re talking about. The first photo is from the original person’s profile. The second one is how a friend sees the same profile. Note that the ‘Likes’ are different.

Photo of likes menu
The two ‘likes’ show in this photo are hidden from everyone but are visible to the profile owner.

 

Photo of Likes menu
Innocuous likes such as Mickey Dolenz and Triumph are fine, right? You may want to hide the fact that you like Andy Williams, however.

 

Now that you can see why it is valuable to have two profiles, let’s get back to work. The next step is to show you the difference between sharing and allowing things to be seen on your timeline. So far, all of this has to do with YOUR stuff and YOUR actions. We’ll get into your various interactions later.

 

Your Facebook timeline is a constantly evolving record of what you do on Facebook. As long as you stick to simply sharing things, you can hide that from others, all or some or none. As we showed you in our last post, you choose whom you want to share your own stuff with. That post is here: Ultimate Guide Part One . Today, we’ll deal with your timeline and show you how to use its edit feature.

There are two ways, at least, to keep things off of your timeline. Let’s deal with your Activity log first. Head to your own timeline, click on your profile pic up on the top right then click on Activity log. The next page that opens is a long list of things you’ve done recently. Each of those things can be edited, depending on what it is. Two more pics will explain this better.

Photo of Activity log
This item is something that someone else posted. Hovering our cursor over the circle icon, we can see that it is allowed on our timeline.

In the photo above, there is a comment on something that was posted on someone’s profile. It is allowed on the timeline. How do we get it off the timeline?

Photo of Activity log 2
Because we commented on someone else’s post, we can ONLY delete the comment. That is the only way to get it off of our timeline.

 

We can only delete the comment. Yes, this is going over the same stuff as our last post but we feel that we have to reinforce this concept. Let’s deal with something that we did. Facebook is more forgiving with things that you post yourself.

 

Photo of a photo
This album is, for now, allowed on the timeline.

 

Photo of another photo
If you click on the circle, you can perform several actions as far as your timeline is concerned.

 

If you put something up on Facebook, you can hide it from your timeline. It sounds simple but we think it gets a bit confusing (and frustrating) for some of you.

 

TIP: When you share something with some of your friends but not all of them, the former can see it on your timeline but the latter can’t. If you hide something from your timeline, you are hiding it from EVERYONE. More on this in the next post.

Thanks for reading!

Facebook

Computers Made Simple is on Facebook!

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We finally took the plunge and started our own Facebook  page. Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple

We’ll give it a shot and see if we can get some fans, some action and maybe even some questions. We love comments here, too, but if you comment on our Facebook page, you will get an answer right there instead of having to come back here to read it. We usually send an email response as well so here or there, it doesn’t matter. We love comments.

The Facebook page will allow us to share links that don’t really fit here plus it will give us an opportunity to actually interact with our readers. Computers Made Simple gets quite a few hits for such a tiny spot on the ‘net and we’re excited to provide a new opportunity to get our solutions out there.

This is what our new page looks like:

Photo of Computers Made Simple Facebook page
Only one ‘like’ so far but we hope to see more!

In the near future we’re looking at posts on QQ, Facebook, back-ups, recording different things with your computer, etc. There’s always something new to write about. If you have requests or problems, contact us here with a comment or on our new Facebook page. We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading!

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Timeline

Half a solution – deleting a like box, probably forever

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We’ve been confronted by a problem this week, a problem that we could duplicate but not solve. One of our readers commented that she was unable to unhide her June like box on Facebook. To get to the root of this problem, we deleted the June box in one of our profiles on Facebook. Lo and behold it’s gone, forever it seems. If we find a way to get it back, you’ll be the first to know. Here’s how we got rid of the box:

1. Head to your timeline and find the box you want to delete. In this case, our June Like box is the target.

Photo of a like box on Facebook
This was our June Like box before we deleted it. No edit button shows at this point.

2. Hover your cursor (mouse) over the top right corner of the box to bring up the edit button giving you a choice of editing or removing the box:

photo of edit button on like box
Hovering your cursor over the top right corner brings up this Edit button.

3. Click on the icon to bring this menu up:

photo of Facebook box edit menu
The choices for this box are to simply hide it from the timeline.

4. You would think that if you can hide the box from the timeline, you’d be able to unhide it, right? Well, we can’t. We also hid another box and lost it too. If you don’t refresh your page, you can undo the hide but once you refresh the page, it’s gone forever…we think.

photo of hidden box
It’s gone! We’re looking for it. If we find it, we’ll let you know.

5. Once we refreshed the page, not only were the two likes gone, the whole damn box was gone!

Facebook is chock full of mysteries and confusion sometimes, isn’t it? But it’s fun to try and unravel these mysteries. We often wonder if the people who created this mess will ever be able to simplify it or, perhaps, they don’t want to. The more confusing the interface is, the less chance that someone will be able to dodge Facebook’s ads and their various invasions of our privacy. The less people hide, the more money Facebook makes, right? You might want to think about that before you dive into it.

Thanks for reading!

 

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline

Lost your Like box on Facebook? Here’s how to get it back.

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If you’ve lost your like box on your Facebook timeline, here’s how to get it back:

1. Head over to your profile and look for the line of boxes under the banner that has your profile photo, your name and the words Update Info and Activity Log. Look for the little square that has a down arrow and, probably, a number. It looks like this:

Photo showing various boxes on Facebook timeline
This box has the number 6 in it. Click on the down arrow.

2. Once you click on the down arrow, this is what you’ll see:

Photo showing various boxes on Facebook timeline
There are 11 boxes shown, meaning that 6 were hidden before and two boxes have nothing in them.

3. What you’re looking for is the box with the add or plus sign on the top right. Click the plus sign to see this:

Photo showing box choices on Facebook
Since this person already has a like box, the thumbs up icon is not shown here but will be if your Like box is missing.

4. This person can add three things to the box list, all three are apps. If this person had hidden the Like box in the past, there would be an icon like the one just to the left of this drop-down menu. Just click that icon and you’ll have your Like box back again.

5. If you have a box that you want to hide, hover over the right corner of the box with your cursor (mouse) and a little pen icon, meaning that you can edit the settings, shows up. Click that and you’ll see this menu:

Photo of menu to swap boxes on Facebook timeline
This is where you can change the position of a box or remove it from your favorites.

6. With this menu, you can swap position with another box to have it shown on your timeline without your visitors having to click on the down arrow. Alternatively, you can simply hide the box completely.

 

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Timeline

Facebook Privacy Check

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We’ve been writing about Facebook privacy for quite a while now. There seem to be an incredible array of privacy settings, right? If you’d like to do your own experiments, and we suggest that you should, here’s what to do: Set up a second Facebook profile.

1. Instead of logging into Facebook, apply for a new account. Fill in your details on the page that comes up when you log out of your current account or simply go to Facebook.com in another browser. You could use your real identity, such as your second name and the same last name, or a fake one, it won’t matter to Facebook, even though their terms say you have to be a ‘real person’. You must use a real email address but that’s easy, sign up for a new hotmail or gmail account and you’re off.

2. Add yourself as a friend. That’s your first step. Forget about photos or personal details for now. Add your other account as a friend (in a separate browser), and get to work. Keeping both profiles open in separate browsers will show you instantly how changing the settings on your new profile affects what updates you send out to your other, original profile.

3. On the new account, go around liking things, posting crazy pics with different privacy settings and so on. On your normal account, check to see what is shown from your alter ego’s activities. What you’re looking for, obviously, is how you can hide what your fake account does from your real account. If your fake account can hide things, then your real account can hide things as well.

4. Make a note of anything you do. We find ourselves lost in the thick of Facebook privacy pages sometimes and, quite frankly, we forget how we got there. Part of this is deliberate. We have to describe how to get to a certain page to our readers so it has to be kind of second nature to us. Getting lost lets us experiment with our reader’s experience. If we explain something and we get lost, then sure as shootin’ our readers will too.

5. You can use the second account to subscribe to pages and websites that you wouldn’t normally subscribe to, knowing that your privacy is guaranteed. For some of you who have very eclectic tastes, this might be the answer to the whole Facebook privacy problem. Instead of trying to decipher Facebook’s arcane privacy settings, simply start a new account and get on with exploring the alternate lifestyle you want to hide from your family and/or your friends.

6. Another benefit of a new account comes with the different Facebook games you play. If you need shots of energy in Mafia Wars, send them from your new account. There are quite a few games that require neighbors in order to advance. Adding yourself as a neighbor opens up more doors in games such as Farmville or Hidden Chronicles.

Adding a new Facebook account and experimenting with it is simple, free and probably takes a lot less time than trying to remember which setting is which, at least as far as privacy is concerned. It also takes less time than reading posts such as we have here on Computers Made Simple but we hope you still come back to visit us now and then.

Thanks for reading!