Benjamin Bloodworth's Blog

Archive for July, 2009

If you’ve used Facebook for any amount of time, you’ve certainly gotten more than your fair share of notification spam. You login to your Facebook account and see that you’ve got multiple notifications waiting for you. Your heartbeat races with anticipation of new friend requests, photo comments, or wall posts only to find out that three of your friends have taken a Flixster quizz, 2 your friends need your help in Mafia Wars, and one of your friends has gotten a new high score in Bejewled. It doesn’t take long to completely lose interest in the notification icon and view it as a nuisance. Here’s a simple guide to get back the excitement of a possible new friend request or photo comment as the only notifications when that little red box pops up.

Little Red Box

Reducing your notifications starts by clicking the box that brings so much joy and frustration.

1. Click the notifications icon.
   

   Facebook Notifications Icon

2. Click See All.
   

   Facebook See All Notifications

3. On the right hand side of the screen, you will see a list of all applications you’ve authorized to display notifications. Uncheck any application from which you no longer wish to receive notifications.
   

   Facebook Applications Authorized to send Notifications

That’s all there is to it. You will no longer receive notifications from the application you unchecked. Now when you login and see the notification icon, you’ll know it is something actually worth caring about.

There are a lot of commonly used status updates for Facebook.  There’s the “I’m at work update”, the “I’m at home update”, the quote from a song lyric update, etc…  Here are some status updates that you never see.

… is thanking the sun and the earth’s axial tilt for this beautiful day.

Sorry Sol, we know you’ve been burning up the cold darkness of space providing the earth with life sustaining warmth and sustenance for about 4.5 billion years now, but God always gets credit for the good days. Instead, we always see “… is thanking God for this beautiful day!”

Earth's Axial Tilt

… is thanking God for this crappy day.

God has a really good gig going. He gets credit for all the good things in our life and is never blamed for the bad things. He even gets credit for something as trivial as adjusting weather patterns for an entire planet so that his worshippers, at least some of them, have pleasant weather.

Why does God grant good weather to some of his worshippers and not others? Well the good book tells us that it rains on the just and unjust alike. Also, we need rain for plants to grow. Those plants are eaten by animals, which we also eat. That whole circle of life thing would come to an abrupt end if it never rained.

… is going to kill his wife

You never see husbands complaining about their wives on Facebook. It’s always the wives complaining about the husbands. The only valid conclusion is that women are perfect and men are the devil. Since I am someone’s husband, I have to disagree. It’s not all monster truck rallies and gun shows living with you ladies. Men just don’t complain about their wives on Facebook.

You’ve probably seen ads similar to the one below on Facebook.

Facebook Ad With Friend Pictures

These advertisements are written in such a way to make you think your friends are already using the application or service.  They may be using the application, but they most likely aren’t.  These advertisements randomly grab a selection of your friends’ photographs to insert into the advertisement.   I’m sure these advertisements are more effective than most because of peer pressure.  If you are fooled into thinking that your friend uses the application or service, then you’re more likely to try it.

When you create your Facebook account, you give Facebook permission to use your photo in these advertisements.  This is sneaky and underhanded in my opinion.  Fortunately, you can take back that permission.

1. Click the Privacy Settings option from the Settings menu.
   

   Facebook Privacy Settings Menu

2. Click News Feed and Wall.
   

   Facebook Privacy Landing Page News Feed and Wall Highlighted

3. Click Facebook Ads.
   

   Facebook Privacy News Feed Wall Menubar Facebook Ads

4. Choose No one from the Appearance in Facebook Ads drop down menu.
   

   Appearance In Facebook Ads Setting

5. Click Save Changes.

Now your photo will still be used in advertisements that you see, but it won’t be used in advertisements your friends see.  Now Facebook can’t use your photo to mislead your friends into thinking you are using an application or service that you are not.