yesterday a facebook friend sent out an open plea for assistance in reducing the clutter in her facebook stream. “it started with a game here and a survey there, but soon it just took over!” she complained. “Is there anything I can do?”
yes indeed, I told her. here’s how:
a happy, healthy facebook stream is filled with stuff you want to see. like jack sprat and his spouse, however, our ideas of desirable content vary widely. the other day I explained how to access the setting to turn off notifications from applications you didn’t care about. getting rid of wall posts relating to those things is even easier.
move your mouse over one of the offending items. over on the right side, you will see the word “hide” appear
click on the arrow beside hide and you will see a dropdown list
select the option that is not the person (in this case mafia wars) and you will see
facebook has removed all posts by that application and will not show any in the future.
oops – decided you really want to see all those surveys/game updates after all? no problem. down at the bottom of the page on the right you will see a link to “edit options.” clicking on it will popup this window:
ta-da! you can add them right back in.
other questions? comments? let me know below!
I've gotten it down to where I might see two or three applications in my feed a day that I don't want. It has only taken me three months of blocking applications but I would like to think it is worth it.
I was surprised how easy it was suppressing other people's wall posts from apps relative to setting privacy stuff for oneself on those same apps. thanks for the comment!
Todd,
Wassup, brother?
I actually wrote a blog entry (with a 2 minute video that shows how to do it) at http://www.the-linkedin-speaker.com/blog/2009/06/16/facebook-training-tip-remove-annoying-status-updates-hidden-hide-button/
However, its still annoying to remove the applications one by one.
gotta love the video! dunno, I guess they could just present a list of all the apps that people might use to clog your stream that you could check off at once, but after the first run down my home page hiding this and that, I have not had to do that much more – maybe one or two a week. thanks for the comment!