Last week I wrote a post telling you about Facebook and its Edgerank process and how it limits what you get to see from business pages, fan pages, and even your friends. Personally I think that stinks. However, I also know a way to get around that if you really want to see whatever certain people or certain groups are saying without having to visit all of those folks or groups individually.
 |
If you look towards the bottom of the left side of your Facebook page, you’ll see something like this. What you won’t immediately see is the “more” link, and all that takes is for you to move your mouse over there and it’ll come up. What you see here on my example is a link to my Facebook business page and two lists I specifically created.
Click on the “more” link and you will see something like this, possibly even this large:
You may have never seen this before. All those things you put in your profile that you’re not thinking about… they actually link to a page, whether there’s anything there or not. For instance, I went to high school in Limestone Maine for 2 years and I popped it into my profile, not even thinking about it. Facebook created a page for it, but if I click on the link no one else has ever joined. I can’t say that I specifically created it, but I’m stuck with it on my profile because it’s a real place.
As you’ll also notice there are some other interesting links in here that I didn’t create. There’s Close Friends and Acquaintances; you probably have those on your list page already. You can pull those up and add people to them. What’s funny is that every once in awhile, Facebook will ask you if you want to move certain people you’re connected to into Acquaintances, saying you haven’t talked to them in awhile so maybe you want to see less of what they put out in your stream. For me, close friends is the important one here, along with the other two that I actually created, which I mentioned before.
To create your own list, you see the tab there in the top right. Click on that and it gives you this:
Just name your list, then start adding people or pages you like here. You’ll have to know the names, which could end up being problematic initially because you might not remember everyone if you have lots of connections. But you can always come back to your list to add more if that’s what you want to do.
Once you do this you’re good. You never miss another post or missive from the people you put into these lists, and you can even create a list for people you really don’t want to hear from or see all that often, then hide their stuff from your stream. They’ll still be connected to you, and you can go look at them any time you want in that list, but let’s face it, some of our friends or connections post stuff we might not always want others who visit our page to see.
One last thing. Some of the lists you can delete and others you can’t. If you created it for your own purpose, you can delete it. But if it’s something that Facebook feels others might decide to join, such as my SUNY Oswego link (it already had State University; oh well…), you’re just stuck with it.
It might take you some time to set it up for perfection but once you’ve done it, you’ll never miss, or always miss, whatever you want based on how you want to see things. Cool or what?
Mitch, getting better control of your profile has to be good. I wonder if someone would consider you guilty by association.
It works this way in the real World so I wonder if people are smart enough to know social media is a different animal.
I mean people friend you just because they like what you are wearing.
I would hate for an employer to deny me a job because of my social media associations.
Michael, if you care what people think because of others you’re associated with it either means you know better or that you care more about what people you don’t know think than about your friends. Personally, I could care less if someone doesn’t like who I’m connected with and it would never even enter my mind. And trust me, I’ve known some people who might be considered as less than “safe”, if you will, and I don’t care who knows it.
Of course, this article was about something else entirely, and no one will know which people you have in which lists. I can say that there are some things that pop up in my stream that I remove more because I don’t want to see them than my worrying what anyone else sees. I think that if you do that sort of thing then you never have to worry what someone else might see.
You are right Mitch the post is about removing list you do not want to see, I am referring to the fact that those list are seen by everyone.
So it might be a stretch, but what if a person was found guilty of a crime and law enforcement interviewed everyone on their contact list.
I am not concerned about what others think, but I am concerned that because of your troubles it causes me trouble.
Just a thought.
I still don’t worry about it, since I trust my own judgment for the most part in knowing the people who are connected to me.
I love this feature Mitch. I was already afraid of sharing too much to my friends on blogging and business and this feature has helped me to categorize many there. It makes it easy too to find categorical feeds from your lists. Thanks for sharing.
Glad to help Lisa, although if you write something you might not keep it from others, but you can keep certain people from showing up in your stream. On the other front you can always block certain people from seeing what you post; I haven’t done that though.
Good tutorial, Mitch. For sure many users haven’t seen those options and use walls get full of unnecessary news or people just miss the things that they want to read.
Thanks Carl; I try. 🙂
You always do a good job, Mitch and I have said previously most bloggers can learn from you. I hope you and your family are safe, I am looking weather report in New York now and I am very scared.
I am having the problem of not getting the real & important news which i need to know rather my wall is fully loaded with unnecessary information which I don’t need to know at all. This tutorial is going to wash my wall definitely. I am searching for ways to get rid of these meaningless news for a long time. Let’s see how it works.
Thanks Mitch for the post.
Glad to help Olivia. There are other ways to remove things you don’t want to see as well, but Adrienne Smith wrote about that so I’m not taking away her thunder.
In my own word, Facebook note feature is cool because it is helpful in helping us filter who we want to share and read from.
In most times, I usually missed what I was suppose to be getting from people I care most about but instead, Facebook keeps loading my wall with unnecessary news and updates from people I don’t know – and they called that Sponsored Story!
It sucks!
And with your nice and easy to follow tutorial, I have to remove those from my wall and get the right one there.
I like it and thanks for sharing knowledge of it with us 🙂
Glad to help Olawale. It certainly has made my life easier I can say.
Hi Mitch Mitchell,
Wonderful detailed tutorial, i often use facebook for business people and sales which i’ve created a new list as you’ve mentioned in post.
thanks
Glad to be of assistance Raj; hope it all works well for you.
Thanks for sharing Mitch. Things were messed up on my facebook. But after trying your list tutorial it really works! I can now easily follow a certain page/ group via the list I created and helps me keep updated from time to time.
Glad it’s working for you Jeff; that’s what I’m here for. 🙂
Thanks very much for the read of your article Mitch. It’s true that some friends and acquaintances do post a lot of unnecessary trivial things we don’t need to know or share and it would be ideal to have a list of important contacts kept aside. Just hope I can get it to work!
It should work for you Ivan. I just moved a few more people tonight and it’s doing just what I wanted it to.
In most times, I usually missed what I was suppose to be getting from people I care most about but instead, Facebook keeps loading my wall with unnecessary news and updates from people I don’t know – and they called that Sponsored Story!
It sucks!
And with your nice and easy to follow tutorial, I have to remove those from my wall and get the right one there
There you go Mark; it’ll work well for you. By the way, I changed your name to fall in line with the comment policy.
I have created lists, but I have never took advantage of it (Oh, well, the only time I actually use my profile is when I really want to contact someone and to read funny comics/images :D).
Know that I think about it, I think FB has been hiding posts from many of my friends; I really need to go back and change some settings 🙂 And of course, make more use of FB lists 🙂 Thank you for the post, Mitch!
No problem Jeevan. I sometimes forget to check those lists for a long while myself but I eventually do get to them.
Gee, looks like Circles. 😉
Lists here and on Twitter is the best way to get a handle on all the information which is posted to all these services. Easier to concentrate on smaller sets of contacts at a time than to try and see it all in one massive stream.
You’re right Scott, it is a lot like circles, and for awhile there was a plugin that would let you set things up on Facebook like circles, but it didn’t last long. I actually use it more to segregate some people into those areas to leave my main stream open so I don’t always feel compelled to remove certain types of posts that I don’t want there.
Mitch, so the data from all the people I’ve connected with and the pages I’ve “liked” over the years does get stored somewhere. It’s really cool to be able to click on my old employer and see only the posts from friends who still work there. Crazy!
Suzanne, all of that stuff is always saved somewhere. A month ago Facebook added it all back to each person’s profile, which got a lot of people upset thinking it was their private messages. So yes, you can go back and pretty much see everything now.
Hey Mitch this is a really cool post, I wasn’t aware of this feature on Facebook. However to tell the truth, with Facebook undergoing so many massive changes I still am unable to figure out how to go about it. There came a point when I felt I need a manual to use Facebook. However I will try out what you have explained here, hope to have some relief. Thanks for sharing the post.
No problem; good luck to you in trying it out.
Thanks for sharing this Mitch. Its always good to know so we can “compartmentalise” our friendships etc. on Facebook. We learn every day.
No problem Yetunde, and I hope it works out the way you’d like it to.
Hey Mitch,
Nice information, though I’m already using this technique for quite a long time and it actually helps you to keep connected and updated with important people and pages.
Good deal Aasma.
What a wonderfully helpful tip! I’ve been struggling with finding ways to see what others share yet not be snowed under by some of the more prolific posters. This should help a lot.
That’s what I’m here for Allan; now if I can figure out how to make money off it. lol
🙂 That’d be great!
I think its lame that Facebook censors content and charges the owner money to communicate with all their fans.
We have over 1,000,000 likes on our infocelebrity facebook page and I kept on wondering why our ‘Likes’ doubled over the last year but our referral traffic stayed flat. I guess it makes sense now.
Yeah, many of us that have pages thinks it’s horrid as well. People signed up to get our missives and thus they should be able to get them. Oh well…
Great feature Mitch. I am really glad you posted this article. Yeah, sometimes it is quite frustrating to check out every updates which we actually don’t want to see and finally land up going to that particular person’s profile. I am definitely going to implement this for my Facebook account. Thanks a ton!
Glad to help David; good luck with it all.
Thanks for these tips. Really need to personalise my Facebook profile too. It’s so obvious everything gets done automatically according to Facebook default settings but it’s good to know how to make our profile in the way we want.
Glad to help give you another option Martin.