13 Tricks for Beyond Basic Users

Protect Your Profile with Groups and Screened Chat

Keep it Professional - Create Friends Lists and Groups to Enhance Security and Privacy:  From the home page, in the upper left you should see the option to Edit My Profile under your profile photo. From there click on featured people in order to easily create groups and lists like family, friends, coworkers, etc. You can also create lists by selecting Edit Friends in the drop down menu from Account, then clicking the Create a List button.  Lists are a great tool to have at your disposal because you can customize each groups level of access to your profile.

Keep Your Privacy; Appear Offline to Some Friends:  Sometime’s it’s just not a good time to chat, and maybe not every one of your Facebook friends gets this. To appear offline to that one friend whose chat habits pester the everloving patience right out of you, open the Chat box and select Friend Lists. Then create a new list and add the names of the offenders. Their names will now appear with a slider next to them in the Chat box, which you can slide right on over to offline (grey) when you’re not able (or wiling) to talk.

Sharing and Downloading Photos

Share Your Flickr Photos by Integrating with Facebook: Yahoo! recently made friends with Facebook, which means you can now integrate your Flickr account with your Facebook profile. In your Flick account, go to Your Account, then enable the Share button under Sharing & Extending. This will automatically take your public Flickr photos and upload them to your Facebook account. Likewise, your Facebook status updates will be posted on Yahoo! Updates platforms.

Download Complete Photo Albums in a Single Click: Use Fotobounce, a Windows desktop app that also includes back up, uses advanced facial recognition to auto detect faces in your photos, and permits remote access to photos via mobile device to download full albums from Facebook in a single click.

Professional Apps and Browser Add-Ons

Utilize Your Networks While Job Hunting: Job hunting is hard, especially lately, and one of the tenets of trying to find a permanent position is networking. Since you’ve already been social networking through Facebook, why not leverage your connections to help you land a gig? The Branch Out app, based on the idea that it’s who you know, seeks out people you might have a second- or third-degree connection to through your friends so that you can make contact at a company that you’re interested in. This does mean you have to allow the app access to your friends list – where it then combs through their friends and employment information. It can automatically take information from Facebook and LinkedIn to create a Branch Out profile for you, help you create a professional profile and you can view job listings. Get a quick preview of functionalities in this video:

Easily Update Your Status in iGoogle and Firefox: The Facebook widget for igoogle  will quickly put a box into your igoogle home page, allowing you to update your status right there. You can also view your news feed, make comments and chat via the box. Firefox fans will prefer the FireStatus add-on  which enables you to send status updates, notes and links to Facebook and Twitter. FireStatus also displays updates via notification popups; good to keep in mind in case you hate popups. Or put a toolbar directly into the browser with the FB Toolbar add-on.

Increase Privacy: Lock Down Apps, Friends Lists, Get Notified, Use HTTPs and More

Protect Your Friends List: Sometimes Facebook makes for some awkward moments – say maybe it’s easier if your roommate doesn’t know that you’ve friended his ex, or for your boss to know you’ve liked the competition. In order to keep the peace you’ll need to shut down (or at least shutter) your status updates. From Privacy Settings, choose Customize Settings then change Posts by me to suit your preferences (like Only Friends, or customized to exclude your roomie/boss man specifically from seeing updates - which means they won’t see a notification on who you’ve friended). Depending on the circumstance, you might also want to consider gating access to your friends list as well. This can be done by visiting View Settings in Privacy Settings then editing the See Your Friend list.  

Keep Your Apps Under Control:  Apps like to run rampant on your FB profile, picking up information, sharing photos, worming into your friends list. Lock ‘em down by visiting Privacy Settings, they’re under Applications and Websites at the bottom. Choosing either Edit Settings or hitting the hyperlink on Remove unwanted (or spammy) apps will take you to a list of your apps, games and websites. From here you can view information about each one including the date it was last used, and what information it pulls from your profile (under Edit Settings).

Ditch anything that isn’t completely necessary – yes, this does mean that no one will be able to see which messed up care bear you are, but since the alternative is that the care bear app is accessing all your info (including basic info, contact info, photos, relationship status, profile info, and friends info), maybe it’s time to decide what’s more important to you. Turn Off Platform apps gives you the option to choose which apps and sites you want off – but means that friends won’t be able to contact you via that app any longer and any information or settings will be deleted.

Stay Hidden from Facebook Searches: Sometimes you really just don’t need to be findable – maybe you’re avoiding an invite from your ten-year high school reunion or a very persistent coworker. Whatever your reason, it’s simple to keep yourself from popping up in the search results section. Just go to Privacy Settings, View Settings (at the end of “Connecting on Facebook”). The first option you see should be “Search for you on Facebook,” with a drop down menu at the right. Just choose “Friends Only” and only people you’ve added as friends can successfully find you on the FB. Or shut it down so that only you can search for yourself, and be virtually unfindable.

Start Over - Create a Disposable FB Account: If you’re feeling like cutting your Facebook experience down to the minimal then start fresh. Using a disposable email, set up a secondary account on FB. Next, log into your first account and suggest the essential friends you’ve pared it down to. Log into the second account, and accept the requests and you’ve officially started fresh with your smaller crew.

Use a One Time Password to Use Facebook on Unsecure Networks. For those who make a habit of logging on from unsecure networks and unfamiliar computers: A) Why do you do that? And B) We really hope you’re already using one-time passwords. All it takes is a text to OTP with the numbers 32665 (FBOOK) and you’ll be sent a temporary password back in a text message. The temporary password expires within 20 minutes and can only be used once so make sure caps lock is off and you’re typing carefully. See an explanation of one-time passwords, HTTPS and account notification here:

Get Notified of All Account Log Ins : Another nice option located neatly in Account Security is the feature to receive an email whenever a new computer or mobile device logs into your account – a nice added layer to alert you to possible hacks into your account. If something fishy is going on, you’ll want to know sooner rather than later. You’ll also be able to see all activity on your account under Account Activity which is also located in Account Security.

Protect Your Browsing by Connecting to HTTPS: To make sure your account defaults to connecting to HTTPS settings whenever available, choose Account Security (located within Account Settings). There you’ll have the option to check a box next to “Secure Browsing (https)” which will, as it helpfully says below, opt to browse FB on a secure connection whenever one is available. HTTPS, for those unfamiliar, creates a secure connection on an insecure network, which aids you in protecting your account info. Note: This wasn’t a feature that was rolled out to everyone at the same time so some users were reportedly still waiting as of last month. Also, some applications could be affected or blocked by this change - and by “some” we mean “most.”