Facebook now has 1.7 billion monthly active users and over a billion of those users access the site on mobile. American spend an average of 40 minutes on the site. This is even higher when you consider that another 50 minutes are spent daily globally but users across Facebook apps. When it comes to Facebook alone, it is estimated that the average person spends 20 minutes on the site. Well this tells us something and it’s that there’s something Facebook is doing right that keeps people on it. The site has over the last eight years or so gradually evolved into a business platform which has seen the average website receive thousands in page views by simply advertising on Facebook. What this has done to the biggest social media company in the world is that it has increased its digital advert market share to 12 percent this year second only to Google’s 31 percent market share. Even when we don’t have notifications, we just want to see what our friends are doing which makes us want to open the app on our phones at intervals. While there has been a flurry of services on Facebook, you should still have control and manage carefully how you share information on Facebook because after all, people are watching. A house was robbed recently in Nigeria and the police apprehended the suspect, he confessed to seeing a post on the victim’s profile on Facebook where it said something like “on vacation for one week with the family”. This raises privacy questions.
For professionals especially, this article I came across on Inc; the business website says it all about what you should probably/probably not allow on Facebook. It also provides ways you may not have known before now to change these settings. See below
Friends with your boss or colleagues on Facebook but don’t want them to know just how hard you partied last night? You can post a Facebook update and exclude only certain people from seeing it.
How to do it: Facebook app > start a post > dropdown menu below your name (starts with Friends) > Friends except … > Add all the Friends you (don’t) want.
Have Facebook stop automatically playing videos in your feed.
Surreptitiously scanning your Facebook news feed during a meeting gets a lot more conspicuous if a video suddenly starts emitting loud sounds of a cat falling down a staircase.
Change your settings to prevent such autocratic auto-playing. Not only will this save your sanity, it will save you a lot of data on your phone plan.
How to do it: Facebook app > More > Settings > Account Settings > Videos and Photos > Auto-play > Never Autoplay Videos.
Change your relationship status without alerting the known universe.
Heartbreak is hard enough without your college roommate’s best friend reaching out about your newly single status. You probably didn’t know you can switch your status without announcing it to everyone in their news feed. (Note: You can also do this with job changes.)
How to do it: Your profile in the app > About > Relationship > small button on bottom left with silhouettes > change to Only Me > switch status to Single (or whatever you like). Changes will not appear in others’ news feeds.
Teach people how to pronounce your name correctly.
Tired of having to explain it all the time? Let Facebook do the work for you.
Profile page in app > Edit info > scroll down to + How do you pronounce your name? This will then show up for people in your “About” section.
Disable Facebook Messages-read receipts (when it says “seen”).
If you’re like me, you don’t always want people to know when you’ve seen their Facebook messages. Sometimes you’ll even studiously avoid a message because you know once you open it, you’ll feel forced to reply.
Fortunately, there’s an app for that — sort of. While you can’t avoid read receipts on the Facebook mobile app, there are several options on desktop. The free app Unseen allows you to secretly read Facebook messages without the sender knowing. Unfortunately, enabling this superpower means you won’t be able to see when others have read your messages. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than avoiding messages altogether for fear of being “seen.”
How to do it: If you’re using Chrome, download the extension Unseen for Facebook. If you use Firefox and/or Internet Explorer, install Chat Undetected.
Export birthdays into your calendar.
One of the most useful parts of Facebook is getting to seem really thoughtful for remembering people’s birthdays, but it can be annoying to have to check it daily just for that. Export birthdays into your calendar to never miss one again.
How to do it (easiest from desktop, not the app): Facebook homepage (not your profile) > Events > scroll down to box on the right that says “You can add your events to Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar.” > Birthdays. Copy that link, then open Google Calendar > Other Calendars > click the down arrow > Add by URL > paste the URL.
Save articles for later.
There are probably a number of interesting articles you see in your feed but don’t have time to read right then. Facebook has a built-in bookmark feature to help with this.
How to do it: Click the Share button on the article > Save Link. On desktop, your bookmarked articles will stay in the Saved tab on the left; on mobile, in More > Saved.
Paul Balo is the founder of TechBooky and a highly skilled wireless communications professional with a strong background in cloud computing, offering extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing wireless communication systems.
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