Maintaining Friends and Their Santies on Social Networking Sites

[As I was contemplating on the one of few entries I wanted to write this Monday, I made a quick check-in with Facebook to see that a previously-advised friend-saving tip didn't work, and made haste to see how to rectify that. I wrote this tutorial and posted it as a note on Facebook (and most of the links within this entry may only be accessible through the site) but thought it may be good to share it outside the Facebook realm...maybe to further demonstrate how wacky this site is to the Facebook outsiders. Plus, I want to sleep now. <3corazon]

As the new Facebook layout slowly creeped upon its user's profiles, many users were frustrated and angered by the handy new "features" that allowed us to know EVERY LITTLE THING our friends were doing on the site...whether we liked it or not.

My dear friend Ericka was so kind to come up with a tutorial for YOU, dear Facebook user to change those settings before you fall victim of OMG FRIENZ CUT! to even your B-est of FsF.

Now that it seems that everyone one in Facebookland has the new layout, you may or may not have noticed that you can still see stories when a friend of yours sends an "Ultimate Wedgie" or a "Ball of Supreme Opulence" through applications such as SuperPoke, Lego World, ad nauseaum. If you get one super SuperPoke-happy friend sending to everyone on their list, that friend may unknowingly be flooding other friends' news feed.

Last week, when I was on the verge of blocking a friend's updates, I was advised by going to the application page of said application and electing to "Block" that application would resolve that problem, but when confirming the block, you're informed that you'll still be able to see your friends and all the SuperPoking they do.


Does this spell OMG FRIENZ CUT? Not quite yet (At least, for this reason).

Go ahead to the top right section of Facebook and mouse over "Settings." From there, you can click on "Application Settings." From there, the list of applications you currently have installed on Facebook will be listed, and to the right you'll see options to "Edit Settings," "About" and "x," which will delete the listed setting. To prevent application news showing up in your friends' news feeds, go ahead and click on "Edit Settings."


By default all applications are set as "Allow $_application to publish one-line stories automatically, but prompt me for larger stories." which means that every single time you do something with said application, EVERYONE will know about it as it will be posted on your wall, the friend to whom you $_action using $_application, and on the news feed of all your friends who haven't already blocked from seeing your updates.

You can choose to "Never publish any stories from $_application." or opt to be prompted when you should or shouldn't post such news; I'd recommend either but am partial to never publishing.

I hope this note helps in preventing people from hiding others' news or even worse...going so far as to cut a friend from Facebook. Spread the word, so Facebook friendships remain intact!