Written by PAUL BOUTIN
The designers and engineers who build Facebook are anything but complacent about their success. They face a constant threat from the career-centric LinkedIn, specialized upstarts like Instagram’s mobile photo network and now Google’s fast-growing Google+, an attempt to improve on Facebook’s core design that has picked up tens of millions of users in its first few weeks.
So Facebook has been adding features to make the reigning social network more useful and convenient.
As the number of features grows, though, so does a corresponding problem: Most of Facebook’s 750 million users don’t know these features exist. Some don’t know how to find them, some don’t go hunting for them in Facebook’s ever-growing interface of controls and many don’t even think of them in the first place. A few minutes of exploration can uncover functions that make Facebook not just an addiction but a pleasure to use.
EDIT LINK NAMES AND DESCRIPTIONS
If you want to post a link to your Facebook page but don’t like the title or description that Facebook automatically pulls from the linked page, you can change it. Before you click the Share button, click on the title or description in your pending post. They will change into editing boxes, like those to rename a file on your computer desktop. When you’re done editing, press Enter to save your changes.
TAG FRIENDS IN UPDATES AND COMMENTS
If you type the name of a Facebook friend while editing a status update or a comment, Facebook will automatically create a link to the friend’s page. In fact, it will pop up a list of possible completions for names like “John.” Once you’ve entered a name, you can backspace over it to erase the last name for informality’s sake, or click in the middle to edit the first, turning “Kenneth Smith” into “Kenneth” or “Smith.” Sorry, you can only shorten names — you can’t edit “Kenneth Smith” into “Snuggles.”
POST A PLAYABLE MP3
If you paste a link that ends in “.mp3” into a status update, Facebook will create a player in the middle of the update that lets other users play the music file without having to click through to its host site.
MAKE A PHOTO YOUR PROFILE PICTURE
Any photo on Facebook that has been tagged with your name includes an extra blue link at the lower-left corner of its page labeled Make Profile Picture. Click that, and Facebook pops up an editing page in which you can crop the photo to be just right for your profile.
CREATE A POLL
Hiding in plain sight above the box to enter status updates is a Question button. Posting a question looks just like posting an update, except that it takes the first three answers from your friends and turns them into a poll to keep the discussion focused. You can also set up the poll with your own answers, or add more to those Facebook creates.
COLLABORATE ON A DOCUMENT
Within a Group page, click on Docs at the top of the page and then the Create a Doc button on the right-hand side to create a text-only document that everyone in the group can edit. When you save the document, it will be posted to the group’s feed, just like a status update, with an Edit button in the upper-right corner. To see previous revisions, click Recent Changes.
INVITE NON-FACEBOOKERS TO AN EVENT
When you are creating an event on Facebook, the Select Guests menu shows your existing friends, but it also lets you enter the e-mail addresses of people who do not have Facebook accounts. Type one or more e-mail address, separated by commas, into the Invite by E-mail Address box. Your invitees will receive a message with a link to your event page that, unfortunately, prompts them to sign up for Facebook before they can look at it.
GET THE TICKER OUT OF YOUR WAY
Facebook recently added a constantly scrolling window on the right side of the screen that shows your friends’ updates as they come in. Fun for some, agitating for others. You can’t turn it off entirely, but you can make the moving ticker as small as possible. Using your cursor, grab the bar that separates the Ticker from your Facebook Chat window. Drag it upward until the Ticker is as small as possible — the size of two status updates. That will reduce the level of unwanted distraction it causes while you’re trying to read the rest of the page, while still letting you see new updates.
ADD A CALENDAR TO YOUR PAGE
If you’re a business owner, a team coach or a performer who wants to keep everyone on Facebook apprised of your coming events, simply creating separate Facebook events for each one can be ineffective. These can get lost in the stream of events, making it hard for people to check for, say, your next game. As an alternative, use the Social Calendar app, which was not developed by Facebook. Go to facebook.com/SocialCalendar and click the Add to My Page link in the lower left corner. That will pop up a menu of pages you manage. Click Add to Page next to one or more pages, then click Close. Those pages will now include a Calendar link in their upper left corner, just below Wall, Info and Photos. Social Calendar is pretty smart — it will autocomplete the names of events you’ve already created, and if you type in an Address field, it will add a map link to the location on the calendar. But for maximum attendance, you should still post status updates announcing an event.
TRACK YOUR PAGE’S SUCCESS
On any page you own, whether it is for your business or your clog-dancing club, click View Insights in the upper right corner. Facebook will display charts of user information and page interactions. Beyond the number of Likes and comments, it will plot a graph of page views and user feedback, plus a breakdown of which Web domains are sending traffic to your page, and the demographics of your visitors. If you want to do your own number-crunching, you can export the data into an Excel-compatible file.
KEEP A BIRTHDAY PARTY A SECRET
Do you want to let everyone except one or two people know what you’re up to? Edit a status update as usual, but before you post, click the lock icon below the editing box. That will pop up a menu with options for specifying who can see your update. By default, it’s set to Everyone. Choose Customize instead, and in the dialog box that pops up, enter one or more names in the box near the bottom that says Hide This From. There’s another button to make this your default setting for future updates, so you needn’t worry about accidental oversharing.
BLOCK ANNOYING COMMENTERS
Do you have a friend who constantly posts inappropriate comments on your updates but whom you can’t bring yourself to unfriend? In the uppermost right corner of Facebook, click Account and choose Privacy Settings. That will take you to a page labeled Choose Your Privacy Settings. Near the bottom is a section labeled Sharing on Facebook. Hiding at the bottom of that section is a link labeled Customize Settings. Scroll down to Things Others Share. There’s a setting for “Permission to comment on your posts.” It works just like the filter for sharing status updates: click Customize, and enter names of people to keep Facebook from presenting them with comment features when they look at your posts. Maybe they’ll get the hint.
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