Below is a listing of our top 10 tips for the popular social networking website Facebook.

Hide users, games, polls, etc.

It quickly gets annoying seeing some users posts, game invites, polls, etc. Hovering your mouse to the right of the post and clicking the Hide button as shown below can hide any post. After pressing the button, you can hide that user, or in the case of a Facebook application, hide the application from being mentioned.

To unhide someone or unblock an application, click the Edit Options link in the bottom right corner of the news feed as shown below.

Greasemonkey and FB Purity

Although Facebook does not give you the option to hide friends, friend requests, or various notifications, these can be hidden using browser add-ons. If you’re running Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari, we suggest installing the Facebook Purity add-on.

Update your privacy settings

Click Account in the top-right corner of the Facebook window and then click Privacy settings to adjust who can see what’s on your Facebook profile. We highly recommend going through all the privacy settings to verify your privacy is properly protected.

Anything that is not set to friends only or friends of friends is seen by anyone searching on the Internet. Below is a few things we recommend for most users.

  • Under Search in Privacy settings uncheck Public Search Results. Adjusting the settings prevents users from finding your account and profile picture in search engine search results such as Google.

  • Under Application settings, make sure you’re only allowing applications you want to access your information. Applications you grant rights to can access your Facebook profile information.

  • If you’re curious to see how a program or web page sees your profile, see what an API connected to Facebook sees about you.

Use the Facebook top bar for navigation

Knowing how to properly navigate is vital if you want to get the most out of Facebook. Below is a brief description of each of the available options in the top bar as shown above.

Home (Facebook logo) - Clicking this logo takes you to your wall (News Feed) that shows all friends recent posts.

Friend requests - If any friend requests are waiting to be approved this icon shows a notification of how many friends are waiting for approval. This icon can also be clicked when you want to view any friend recommendations or search for friends on Facebook.

Messages - This section lets you send and receive private messages between one or more of your friends'.

Notifications - Any time a friend or Facebook application creates a new post you’ll be notified in this section. Clicking this icon shows all recent notifications. To change notifications, including any Facebook applications or games, click the See All Notifications link at the bottom and check or uncheck what should notify you.

Search - Finally, the Facebook search box is a powerful tool to quickly find any current friends or people on Facebook. Also, searching for terms such as a company name, product, sports team, music band, etc. finds fan pages and groups to join.

Modify your account notifications

Keep your e-mail and your cell phone clean by updating or eliminate Facebook notifications or keep more up-to-date by adding new notifications. Facebook notifications can be added and removed by clicking Account link in the top-right corner, then Account Settings, and then clicking the Notifications tab.

Top News and Most Recent

By default, Facebook displays your wall postings in the News format, which means it only displays posts it believes are most relevant to you. These results are based on your past interaction with your friends’. To see every post made by your friends that is not hidden, click Most recent your news feed’s upper-right feed, as shown in the above picture example.

If you want to adjust who shows up manually, click the Edit Options in the bottom right corner of your news feed.

View High School work friends

If you’ve added your High School or previous Work locations to your profile, quickly see all classmates and co-workers on Facebook by clicking the link in your Info tab.

Quickly change profile picture

Your profile picture can be changed by visiting your profile, hovering the mouse over your current profile picture, and clicking the Change Picture link in the top-right corner.

Don’t post private information on friend’s walls or in comments

When you make a post on a friend’s wall or in their comments, realize that any of their friends can see that post. If you want something to remain only between you and a friend, send them a Facebook message instead.

Suggestions and random friend invites

As you get more friends on Facebook, it begins making friend, groups, and fan suggestions. These are suggestions made by Facebook and not your friends’. Unless these are something you’re interested in they can be ignored.

This same rule can be applied to people who may want to be your friend you don’t know. If you don’t know someone do not accept their friend invite. Once someone becomes your friend, they can access your information and your friends’ information.

Tag your Facebook friends in your photos

Always make sure to tag any of your Facebook friends that are in pictures you upload. However, never tag someone not pictured. When someone is tagged in a photo, that picture is automatically added to their profile and is a great way to share pictures.

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  • Top 10 tips
  • See our Facebook and social network definitions for further information on these terms.