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)  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)  While logged into Facebook, click on “Settings” (next to your name in the top blue bar).

2)  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)  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)!

Here’s the thing:  Facebook relationships are basically a 1:1 ratio.  You’re either Friends with someone or Not Friends.  There’s no real in-between.

Twitter has more relationship possibilities:

1) You can follow someone and they follow you back
2) You can follow someone and they don’t follow you back
3) They can follow you and you don’t follow them
4) No one follows either.

If you look closely at the latest Facebook update, you can see that they’ve realized the value in not treating all friends equal.  The improvements to the newsfeed are aimed at making it more Twitter-like.  Suddenly Facebook looks like your Twitter feed!

S0 why use Twitter?

That’s exactly what the folks at Facebook want you to think…why use Twitter?

I think the attraction to Twitter is simplicity.  It’s easy to wrap your mind around the concept.  You’re a fan of someone/something…you want to keep up with what’s going on…so you see their newsfeed.  It’s like getting your own custom CNN newscrawl.   It’s got the voyeuristic attaction that Facebook lacks (yet MySpace had).

But Facebook is certainly trying to compete…just how far will they go?   Joshua Porter at Bokardo thinks they’ll go all the way…

Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric – Bokardo.

So I’ve been playing with this WordPress plugin called Facebook Connect.   Not too long ago the folks at Facebook opened up their login/credentials so (theoretically) you can use your Facebook login and password on other sites.

This has the potential to create tighter integration between Facebook and other websites (like this one, for example).   So if I write a post, and one of my Facebook friends comments on it, it *should* show up in a Facebook feed somewhere.

I set up the Plugin and there’s a now there’s a fancy Facebook login button on my homepage.  But does it work?   I dunno.  But YOU can help me test it!!!   Login to the right and make some comments folks!!!

One of my favorite television shows is/was The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War and is now writing a screenplay about Facebook).   It was a very smart show…criticized at times for being too “high brow”.

That always made me snicker (and cringe)…calling a serious television drama about the inner-workings of the  White House too “high-brow” is funny (and sad) to me.   Of course, during the time of the “Bushies”, when “too high-brow” merely meant pronouncing the word nuclear correctly, The West Wing did surprisingly well and stayed on the air for 156 episodes.

It’s been conjectured (by others than myself) that Sorkin’s Deputy Chief of Staff character, Josh Lyman, is based (at least in-part) on the very real Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel.

In the opening scenes of one West Wing episode that aired in 1991  (The Leadership Breakfast), Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn  attempt to light a fire in one of the fireplaces in the White House.    As they comically discuss the finer points of how to properly light a fire (“kerosene”) and the quality of the wood (“spruce is a dry wood”),  the soon realize that fireplace’s flue’s been welded shut since 1896.  Antics ensue.

Flash forward 9 years to a young Obama Cabinet member, Peter Orszag.   This guy’s a 41-year-old Marathon-running, Princeton-taught, Marshall Scholar PHD who heads up the Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (how’s that for high brow?).   So Dr. Peter Smartypants recently moves into his office and notices some logs neatly stacked in a fireplace.    It being a brisk January morning, he decided to light a fire.  The only problem: The Secret Service had capped the building’s chimneys.  Antics ensue.

So you tell me…is this life imitating art, or is the Obama camp literally sending a smoke signal ‘hat tip’ to Aaron Sorkin?   I suppose the former, seeing as it would be taking a mere ‘hat tip’ a bit far –even by Ivy League prank standards– to get the Washington DC fire department involved.

So when I logged into Facebook this evening, I saw this:

Here’s what the text says:

Before we knew the cause of the salmonella poisoned peanut butter, the CDC and FDA knew something was amiss.    What’s the fastest way to spread the word?   Social Media!

The avenues employed by the agencies included blogs, texting, mobile versions of agency Web sites, online video from the FDA and CDC on YouTube, podcasts, XML files and RSS feeds including “CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response,” social network outreach on sites like MySpace, a variety of Twitter entities like @FDArecalls and @CDCemergency, virtual worlds, and widgets. The various channels carried both breaking news as well as education information on Salmonella.

So the next time you’re feeling guilty about the amount of time you’re spending on Facebook…just remember that you could be saving lives! 

Social Media Saves Lives: Salmonella Outbreak Pushes HHS, FDA, CDC to Get Social – ReadWriteWeb.

It’s Facebook’s 5th birthday this year, and only 3 years  since  they opened it up to non-college students.   Now, with 150 million members  and the fastest growing demographic being age 30 and up, it is becoming all pervasive.

I know, because my parents just “friended” me.   They’re in their 60′s.  Mom is addicted, and Dad spends his days uploading pictures of his grand kids.    They’ve seen my profile…they’ve seen the pictures.    I don’t mind, though…I’m 37 and lead a reasonably sane life.  My Facebook life isn’t all that different from my real life.

But imagine you’re 15  and your mom barges in on your online world?   The 15 year old I remember wouldn’t have stuck around Facebook for very long.  But where will they go next?

Why Facebook Is for Old Fogies – TIME.

Hopefully your relationship with Facebook will never go sour, because the pre-nup just changed.

That’s right, the dreaded Facebook Terms of Service (TOS) section that deals with their use of content on your profile and related pages (including yoru notes, blogs, comments and everything else) now has one less sentence.

They always had these lines:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

But now it’s missing THESE  Two important sentences:

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

You can see the old Facebook TOS at the web.archive.org

So make sure that anything you upload to Facebook isn’t something that you mind giving away…because ALL YOUR CONTENT ARE BELONG TO US now.

Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”.

Can this be? Or am I dreaming? Wordbook claims to be able to do it, and this is me testing it. I’ll let you know how it goes. I suppose that if you’re seeing this on Facebook, then it works!!!! And if not, I just wasted about 30 minutes.

Update:  It Works!

Well, sort of.  What it does is post a message on your Mini-Feed that you have a new blog posting, including the subject of the blog, and a link to your blog.  It only works with the downloaded version of WordPress (if you use the WordPress blogging service, you’re out of luck.