Thursday, April 9
added 10/27/2009: A lot has changed in Facebook since I wrote this. You might want to also check out this post:  How to change your Facebook Newsfeed Options
Don’t you hate logging into Facebook only to see your entire news feed flooded with notifications from your friend’s recent activities?   Well, you can solve the problem a few ways…
1)Â Remove the friend.
Are they really your friend? If they’re annoying you, why keep them as friends? I know it seems cold and heartless…but if they complain, then you can explain the reasons later (or just play dumb…it’s up to you). Most likely they won’t even notice.
2) Hide the friend from your news feed.
You can do this simply by clicking on the HIDE box in the upper-right-hand-corner of the offensive news item. It will drop down a menu where you can chose to hide all their stories from your newsfeed. Don’t worry…they won’t know (unless you tell them).
3) Hide the app from your news feed.
Similar to hiding a friend, you can hide an App from your news feed.  So when you see your friend has completed the “What 80′s Cereal TV Theme Song Character are you?” quiz, you can just hide that app and you’ll still see other items from that friend, but never this particular app.
Regardless of the above…Turn off notifications in your own Apps!
This is easy to do and your friends will thank you! (Feel free to forward this to ALL your friends who might need a HINT!
TO TURN OFF AUTOMATIC NOTIFICATIONS:
1)Â While logged into Facebook, click on “Settings” (next to your name in the top blue bar).
2)Â Click “Application Settings”
3) you should see a page that says “Application Settings – Recently Used”. Below will be a list of your installed Facebook applicatons.  There is a dropdown menu to the right that says “Show:” Choose “Allowed to Post”.
4)Â For each app, click on “Edit Settings” and change the selection from
Believe me, your friends will love you extra, and you’ll keep them from removing you from their news feed (or worse)!
15, April1:18
You’re wrong, they will know if their feed has been hidden. First, all they have to do is check your wall. If their feeds are not there they will know you have hidden their feed.
So, if you hide someone, you won’t be returning comments or interacting on their life. They’ll know you don’t give a crap.
My question: if you don’t give a crap, why have them as a friend at all?
At cursory glance facebook appeals to folks who want to twitter and drone on about every insignificant detail in their life, whether it is sunny or not, whehether they are hungry for pancakes, I guess they fancy themselves writeres, which is ok, but they don’t want to know anything of substance about other peoples lives, people they added as friends for their own narcisstic friend-tally below their profile picture.
Took me about a week on Facebook to figure that out.
Yeah, this is great for society!
19, April2:28
Other people’s feeds never show up on your wall. They may show up on your feed but your public wall is different than your feed. No one can see your feed but you.
27, April7:53
Is there any way to reverse this? I accidentally put my photos application as “Prompt before posting any stories” and cant change it when i try to edit settings (it just gives me options for getting email notifications when tagged etc but nothing about publishing stories to my wall)