Comments on: Warily, and with much trepidation

By: Thursday Links : A Most Curious Blog

Thursday Links : A Most Curious Blog — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:35:09 +0000

[...] Robert has the same issue a lot of us, including myself, do with Facebook: sheep. She links to two guides on how to avoid them. The reason I link to her post rather than those two guides is because she found them, not [...]

By: judielaine

judielaine — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:21:36 +0000

To address the noise to signal question and not the privacy issue:

in the FB feed view, in the upper right of everyone’s update in line with text entry box that currently says “what’s on your mind”, is an invisible Hide button. Mouse down from the far right of the text entry box and eventually you’s see “Hide” with a downward facing toggle. Click. The box will expand. If the post is from FB’s status or photo sharing or link sharing, all you will see is “Hide [user].” OTOH, if they’re using some sort of external application (game, quiz), you can “Hide [crap^h^h^h^h application].”

If by throwing sheep you mean “Your Friend just threw a sheep in your pasture! Click here to throw a sheep back!” you can stop them from throwing sheep.

You can also delete comments people make on your updates, if that’s where the sheep get thrown. I’m not sure that you can stop a group of people from commenting in advance thought.

Good luck!

By: mari

mari — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:34:09 +0000

I use facebook with the security turned pretty much all the way up. I have a “Limited Profile” for people who don’t need to see everything I post (family), and I never accept invitations to causes/groups/applications. I’ve probably ticked a few people off, since several of my friends have started causes, but I decided when they came out that I didn’t want them and it’s easier to say no to everyone than justify each one. I also crosspost my tweets to my status, but only important ones. There are definitely benefits to the network that facebook provides, especially professionally, as long as you also set standards for how you’re going to interact with everyone. ^_^

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:23:03 +0000

For me, Facebook justified itself when I got back in touch with an old friend from 20 years ago I missed a lot. Your mileage may vary. But I basically add everyone I’ve ever known who I might actually give the time of day.

I just update through Twitter, because I use Twitter and FB for basically the same thing, i.e. links and short bursts of “wit.” I stop by the site itself every now and then and randomly comment-bomb more to say “hi” than anything.

I can’t imagine sitting on facebook.com and hitting F5 for more than a few minutes at a time. But then, I don’t have to.

By: Bill Bradford

Bill Bradford — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:11:11 +0000

You want Greasemonkey in your browser along with the “Facebook Purity” script – http://bit.ly/fbpure

It cleans up a lot of the crap. Gets rid of app invites, moves all the “X is now friends with Y and likes giving dolphins blowjobs” type stuff under a toggle, etc.

By: Thorfi

Thorfi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:45:30 +0000

*nod* It’s actually the same problem the RIAA and media producers are having, but in reverse… If your content is usable, it can be copied. The only way to make it unable to be copied is to make it unusable…

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:36:05 +0000

The unfortunate situation with walled gardens. The only other option is to cultivate your own controlled community, but you still can’t ignore others. Time to bring back usenet? :)

By: Skud

Skud — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:27:46 +0000

My main issues are 1) need to promote work-related events etc (eg. hack days) through all relevant social media channels, 2) expectation that I maintain Freebase’s “page” on Facebook, 3) people linking to events on Facebook that you need an account to access and RSVP, 4) people talking about stuff within the walled garden that I need to read and respond to in some way.

If I were just working as a developer it wouldn’t be a big deal and I could keep ignoring it, but as a community manager it’s pretty hard to avoid.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:59:07 +0000

Why not use Twitter, LinkedIn, Stackoverflow, and as mentioned above RSS, as the basis for your professional and work connections to the world? Not to mention your blog.

I toss IRC/XMPP into that mix, and I have everything I need without Facebook. (Still have a FB account but not for that purpose)

By: Kareila

Kareila — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:38:57 +0000

My method of filtering inbound information is to define a group of friends I care to follow, and subscribe to the RSS feed of status updates from that one group. The only downside I’ve noticed is missing notifications of other content such as notes and photos.