At the heart of Facebook’s viral-extreme News Feeds are powerful profile settings which essentially default every user to becoming a massive social graph transmitter and receiver. However the more casual friends amassed in Facebook, the more irrelevant crap both parties need to wade through on the desktop every day. In order to justify keeping hyperactive casual friends, we’ve found it key to utilize on-board Facebook OS tools to filter out unnecessary Feed items.
Make New Friends & Keep the Old
Aw… don’t get me wrong, it’s rad and groovy having tons of Facebook buddies, especially search marketing types. That said, some casual industry acquaintances aren’t close enough to justify tracking their happenings from minute to minute. It’s a conundrum because I sure don’t want to un-friend SEMs I actually enjoy, while at the same time, the sheer volume of Facebook feed items screaming across my face every day can be rather overwhelming.
I have one casual SEM comrade who actually sent a notification desktop-way yesterday, via Twitter no less, that he was eating a Big Mac! Tell me…why do I care? Making matters worse, the preferences available in his Feed Privacy page are a bit limited in how he can filter outgoing feed items on the individual-friend level. It’s up to the receiving party to filter incoming feeds.
Thin Unnecessary News Feed Noise
If hyperactive casual friends (you want to keep) are inadvertently Feed-bombing you, use Feed Preferences to specify up to 20 friends NOT to receive news feeds from at all. You will “only get stories regarding these people if nothing else is available.” There are also sliders which proportionally scale the level, across ALL friends, of incoming Story Types including Groups, Photos, Notes, Relationships, Friends, Wall Posts, Profiles, Status, and Posts.
Slider Instructions
A maximum slider setting results in receiving each story type more frequently, from all friends, so long as they actually generate them. The lowest setting reduces the frequency without fully eliminating the story type. Moving all the sliders to the bottom does not turn off the News Feed. Change settings in small increments and test as the sliders are very responsive.
One Is Silver and They Other’s Gold
How did I EVER live before plotting the “Social Graph?” I can stay massively in touch with friends, old and new, from all over the world. Whereas BEFORE I only had 5,000 emails to process each week, NOW there are Stumble messages, YouTube comments, Google alerts, Digg fan mail, Sphinn messages, etc…
That said the most desktop-cluttering community of all is Facebook, where having too many friends can have cacophonous results. Check out the Feed Preferences to thin incoming data to an appropriate level for casual acquaintances and, in general, for the types of stories you’d like to receive from all friends. Please feel free to thin feed data from AIMCLEAR if we’re not that close and you would like to remain friends 🙂 .
