The Social Path

How to purge your purgatory of non-friends on Facebook.

Facebook has implemented a number of interesting new features recently, some of which they have told you about and some they haven't.

Most visibly, there was the reboot of Facebook Groups, which had grown fallow until being recently reborn as a way to organize your social circles. Facebook did a whole livestreamed conference about them, which you can watch that here.

But Facebook is also implementing some rather confusing changes — and not always telling you about them. Case in point: Facebook friend-request purgatory.

You may have noticed recently that when you receive a friend request, your options are "Accept" or "Not Now". At first, this seems like a merely semantic shift from the old "Ignore" button. But there's more going on here. Namely, you may be divulging more than you think to your non-friends.

But don't worry. We're here to help.

'Quit Facebook' protest draws away a mere .008% of users.

If privacy advocates were hoping to send a message with yesterday's "Quit Facebook Day," the message seems to be, "You win, Facebook."

About 34,000 people reportedly pledged to delete their user accounts on the social network Monday. With more than 400 million unique visitors to the site worldwide, that means Facebook suffered a microscopic loss of .008% of its user base. (That's assuming they all actually quit.)

By the time you woke up this morning, Facebook had probably made up the difference already. In America alone, Facebook is growing by more than 148,000 users a day (4.6 million a month).

So what does this failed exodus mean for Facebook and its privacy critics?

One possibility is that Facebook's quick overhaul of its privacy interface actually worked in terms of reversing public opinion. While I applaud the new "sliding scale" of privacy options, I have a hard time believing that this shift was enough to bring people back from the brink.

No, I think the answer is that people simply can't live without Facebook. With no clear alternative for an online social hub — plus a growing, zen-like fatalism about online privacy — it's going to take a lot more than a one-day protest to sever our planetary addiction to status updates and personality quizzes.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Photo credit: Sister L'Via L'Viaquez on Flickr

Your likes, now linked: Facebook tweaks user interests.

It's the season of change, and social media hasn't missed a beat. First Twitter announced a rapid series of updates, and now it's Facebook's turn.

You've probably heard about how Facebook's "Like Button" can now be found across the Web, letting you "Like" specific products and see your Facebook friends' favorites on the same sites. (See it in action over on Levis.com.)

But one issue that hasn't gotten as much attention is the creation of Facebook Community Pages and how they are being integrated — sometimes quite awkwardly — with your Facebook profile.

Linking Up Your Profile

A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about Facebook changing "Become a Fan" to a "Like" button for pages. What was not clear at the time were the full implications of this move.

As part of the expanded use of "Like," Facebook has now linked the "interests" listed in your user profile to two kinds of pages: existing fan pages and new "Community Pages" for topics that aren't tied to a specific brand, business or artist. 

For example, if you listed Weezer as a favorite music in your Facebook profile, the band's name will now link to the official Weezer fan page. But if you're into something more vague, like "Running," the word will link to a community page that looks more like a Wikipedia entry (and probably even includes info from Wikipedia).

The good news? You choose whether to opt in. If you haven't visited your profile page in a while, try going to it and see if Facebook offers you the option of linking your interests to existing pages.

This will link all that content listed in your personal info — music, movies, interests, books, employment and school — to a fan page or community page for everyone who lists that particular interest or activity.

(But be warned: I chose not to create pages for my interests, which have been on my profile for years. So Facebook simply deleted them. Bummer. On a related note, when a colleague made the switch, Facebook somehow added an entirely new interest to his list: Graffiti. We have no idea what happened there.) 

You're also given the option to "hide" any interests you don't want displayed publicly, though I'm not sure why you'd already have such unsavory topics listed on your profile. 

Your new interests, activities and likes will default to public, no matter what your previous settings were, so you will need to edit these accordingly. An additional category of "Friends, Tags, and Connections" has been added to your privacy settings, and is the new home for these settings. For a general step-by-step guide through the privacy process, read our post about how to edit privacy settings.

Time will tell how Facebook users react to Community Pages. They may be adopted as replacements for Facebook Groups, which suffer from the fact that any posted updates are not featured in members' Facebook news feeds. (In other words, you have to keep visiting a group to keep up with it, unlike how you can subscribe to updates from Pages.)

Popular brand pages stand to benefit well from the profile shift, which helps raise awareness of official pages among casual fans. However, I've noticed that smaller brand pages don't register easily in the transition, and users may be linked instead to a Community Page. This will certainly be an obstacle in growing an audience.

On the positive side for brands, especially those not currently using Facebook, Community Pages will make it easier to keep track of what customers are saying.

Still have questions? Facebook might have answers on its Help Q&A.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Day 20: Flush out your Facebook apps.

Throughout January, The Social Path is running daily tips on how to improve your social life — online, at least. Click here to learn more.

Yesterday we set the torch to our old social network accounts that had gone fallow. So while we're in the purging mood, let's take a hard look at Facebook applications.

Facebook has made apps a fluid and integral part of its success, and odds are good that -- whether you know it or not -- you've probably added dozens of apps to your Facebook account, often giving them wide-ranging access to private information about yourself or your friends.

I'm not against adding apps; I do it all the time. But I do think users need to be a bit smarter with their privacy settings for apps and try to keep the number of installed apps to a minimum at any given time. Luckily, both of those steps are pretty simple and shouldn't take you more than a few minutes.

Checking your apprivacy

First, at the top of your Facebook screen, go to Settings, then Privacy Settings, then "Applications and Websites."

You'll see an option to learn more about what information you share through applications, though you can't do much about it here. That level of privacy is determined by how much of your profile information is set to be shared with "Everyone." You can learn more about that in our earlier post.

What you'll definitely want to tweak here is "What your friends can share about you." There's a spooky long list of info that could potentially be divulged via your friends' apps, but you can throttle it back as much as you'd like.

Once you've made that upgrade, it's time to commit appocide. 

Take the ax to your apps

This time, go to Settings > Application Settings. You'll probably see a whole host of apps you barely remember installing, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

What you're looking at is the "Recently Used" list of apps. Depending on your Facebook activity level, there are probably dozens more hiding in the nooks and crannies of your account. On the top right of this Applications Settings page is a drop-down list labeled "Show". There are several options beyond Recently Used, but I'd recommend checking the "Authorized" list if you want to see the most comprehensive roster of apps you've installed.

Then it's as easy as going down the list and clicking the little X. I've done this several times, and I still managed to kill 15 unused apps when I dropped by this time. If you use Facebook a lot and have never purged, you'll probably knock out an easy 50.

OK, that's enough antisocial rhetoric for this week of the Social Media Makeover. Tomorrow we dive back into the fun bits of building new (and old) connections.

Estimated time needed: 15 minutes.

Benefits: Improved privacy and less clutter in your Facebook account.

Related posts:

• Day 8: Start segmenting your Facebook "friends."
• Day 9: Ratchet up your Facebook privacy settings.
• See all Facebook-related posts on The Social Path.

Day 9: Ratchet up your Facebook privacy settings.

Throughout January, The Social Path is running daily tips on how to improve your social life — online, at least. Click here to learn more. 

In an effort to compete with websites like Twitter, Facebook has started a push to encourage more users to publish content publicly. However, they still have settings to respect each user's desire for privacy. 

Yesterday, we tackled the simple step of dividing your Facebook friends into lists. Today, we really put those lists to good use by determining what information each group will get to see about you.

Essentially, each privacy setting in Facebook can be customized to include (or rather, exclude) specific groups you've created.

 

To get started, scroll over the Settings tab in the upper right hand corner of your Facebook page and then select "Privacy Settings" from the drop-down menu. The first section, “Profile Information,” is a good place to start, since it includes most of the info you'll want to assign to friend lists.

Your privacy option for each of these sections include Everyone, Friends and Network, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, and Customize. You'll probably want to use Customize, since it lets you set large-scale filters (ie, Friends-only) and then further refine it by saying which friends or lists should be restricted. 

•  About Me and Personal Info: These include all boxes under the Personal Information heading in your profile: Interests, Activities, Favorites, and About Me. You openness about these tidbits probably depends on how you spend your free time and whether you'd want clients or bosses to know about it.
• Birthday, Religious & Political Views, Family and Relationship: All housed under the Basic Information section of your Info Tab. Facebook clumps family members, "interested in," relationship status and "looking for" together. So if you want strangers to know you're into dudes but not that you have a boyfriend, then you're outta luck.
• Education and Work Info: The very last field in the Info Tab. You may want this public to make it easier for coworkers and clients to find you by searching for your employer.  On the other hand, you may not want your stalker to know where you work. Tough call.
• Photos and Videos of Me: These are important ones.They determine who will see pictures and videos where people have tagged you, usually because you're in them. What that means is, you can't control where you're tagged or what the photos and video will show. Because of that, you might want to limit these categories to close friends. Blocking these from some friends or everyone will take them out of your Photos Tab and the listing under your profile picture. Please note though, these settings do not apply to albums you upload.  
• Photo Albums: This section has its own Edit Settings button so each album can be assigned to specific friend lists.
• Posts by Me: Sets your default for Status Updates, Links, Notes, Photos, and Videos you post. If you're using Facebook as a Rolodex of sorts for some casual acquaintances, you might want to bar them from seeing these updates.
• Allow Friends to Post to My Wall: This is a general setting across all friends no matter groups. To have a wall or not to have a wall, that is the question. 
• Posts by Friends: It's probably smart to limit this category to "Only Friends" instead of "Friends of Friends" or "Everyone." That way, your friends can write on your wall without having to worry about their own privacy. On a related note, you can also restrict bosses, professors, etc., from seeing what your friends are writing.
• Comment on Posts: And to further the wall confusion.... you've already decided whether to have a wall, who can see your posts, and who can post. Now you get to decide who can comment on posts. Because comments from Mom are always the best ones on Lamebook.

Don't forget to go back and set privacy on specific photo albums you've uploaded in recent years. Just can’t part with that album from your dorm kegger freshman year? Odds are you don’t want your boss complimenting your funneling technique, so be sure to set which groups should be able to see each one.

So you've read to here and decided that you just don't publish content frequently enough or offensive enough to warrant using all those darn groups I made you make. But some day you may want to publish just one status update or one album, but restrict it to certain friends. Facebook is ready to accommodate you for that moment.

Each album, status, or post of any kind has individual privacy setting options. Simply click on the lock icon below the status or album publisher and select your level of privacy. This is also great so that once you get your content secured to your liking, you can easily set your privacy for future posts in snap.

Back to your Privacy Settings, once you're satisfied with your profile content, go back to the Privacy homepage and select Contact Information. If you’ve shared openly with your profile Information, you may want to consider being a bit more private here. Facebook gives you the option of sharing home address and phone numbers with everyone but that doesn’t mean you should. In general, these are best shared with a trusted group or not at all.  Past this, Contact Information houses who can add you as a friend from your search results. There are only two options, "Everyone" or "Friends of Friends. 

If you’re a social media hermit and want to be invisible to members outside your friends, you’ll have to go through the Search section under the Privacy Settings menu and select “Only Friends” from the drop-down menu. Side Note: this is also the home of your public search listing (i.e.- whether or not people can find a link to your facebook through Google, more on this when we discuss Universal Listings soon).

Once you’ve finished, select the “Preview My Profile” button in the right hand corner and check how individuals or members of groups will view your profile. And most importantly, always remember that Facebook is not flawless and you shouldn’t post anything that could be damning to your personal life or reputation. Unless it's really, really funny.

Estimated time needed: 30-45 minutes.

Benefits: Improved privacy and security in Facebook.

Day 8: Start segmenting your Facebook "friends."

Throughout January, The Social Path is running daily tips on how to improve your social life — online, at least. Click here to learn more.

I started a Facebook account my freshman year in college. I had no idea what was coming, and I was not alone. We posted pictures and wrote on walls with reckless abandon because Facebook was for us, the college kids. Right?

Then Facebook had to go and let all you others in. I'm looking at you, kid I babysat, and you too, Grandma. The mainstreaming of Facebook hasn't just been rough on the early-20s crowd like me. These days, almost everyone should be using Facebook lists to filter your friends into different categories.

Sure, it's a bit of a pain at first, but once the lists are up and running, you can rest assured that your pastor won't be in the same crowd as your tattoo artist. (Unless you have a really cool pastor, or a really lame tattoo artist.)

Getting started with lists

If you haven't set up a Facebook friend list before, here's a quick primer:

1. Click the "Friends" tab at the top of your Facebook home page.

2. Click "Create New List." If you want to update an older list you created, select it on the left sidebar and click "Edit List."

3. Name the new list and start selecting which friends should go into it. Couldn't be easier, though it can be time-consuming the first time out.

Slicing and dicing your friends

What lists should you create? Of course it's up to you, but here are a few suggestions:

• Family
• Supervisors
• Coworkers
• Clients
• School friends
• Close friends
• Casual acquaintances 
• Industry peers

Ideally, Facebook would let you set your privacy options for each list as you create it, but unfortunately that's not the case. You have to go into your account's privacy settings and start tweaking each category.

We'll tackle all that tomorrow. For today, just focus on creating the right lists and getting your friend pool organized. From then on, each new connection can be added to an existing list.

Estimated time needed: 30 minutes to set up your lists or bring them up to date.

Benefits: Improved privacy and security in Facebook.

Coming tomorrow: Now that you have Facebook user lists, it's time to start assigning different privacy settings to each one.

There's no such thing as privacy in an open universe.

I got a lot of thought-provoking feedback yesterday on my post, "Is job security keeping us from being ourselves online?" One of the most interesting responses was actually an e-mail from my close friend William Sabados, a research scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

I wanted to share Bill's thoughts with you folks, since I think he does a far better job than I did of capturing the big-picture issue of online privacy:

I think (your post) gets to the crux of the problem I have with social media.  In the past I've cast the issue in terms of the open universe/closed universe assumption. If I say something in a room full of friends, I can look around and know who will hear it. The room is a closed universe. I can adjust the message to fit the context of the situation for maximum impact with minimal risk of unintended repercussions.

With Twitter or a blog, you have an open universe. You don't know who is receiving the message and you have even less idea how they intend to use the information. You cannot adjust to fit the context because there are multiple simultaneous possible contexts.

I think the real danger of the medium is when people choose to conduct themselves in an open universe as if they were in a closed universe. They choose to ignore the open universe assumption because they find it inconvenient or like to assume security through obscurity (which has been proven to be a poor strategy time and time again.) In doing such, they are taking on the risk that whatever they say can come back and haunt them.

I suppose the reality of the situation is to decide how risk-averse you are and try to post in accordance with the amount of risk you're willing to take.

I think it's vital that, as Bill says, people recognize how much of our lives exist in the open universe of social media.

As I told him in a reply, it bothers me when people acknowledge only part of the open universe ("my boss could be listening") while ignoring the bigger issues. People often seem far more concerned about saying something potentially embarrassing than they are about saying something that could potentially threaten their family's safety (pictures and names of children, public posts about being out of town, etc.).

But that's a topic for another day. Possibly another day quite soon.

Today's photo credit: brianarn on Flickr.

Is job security keeping us from being ourselves online?

If you're a young professional, the only thing scarier than the economic forecast might just be your Facebook wall.

Or your Twitter feed. Or your blog. Or anywhere else that embarrassing information might be found and cost you a job.

In recent days, the Web's been abuzz with yet another case of someone likely losing a job (or at least a job offer) because of poor judgment online. Specifically, a woman wrote on Twitter that she had accepted a job at Cisco but likely would end up "hating the work." You can read the whole story here and even check out the writer's response on her blog.

Cases like this, which are rare and usually overblown, have created a culture of fear among America's young professionals. And I personally think we all face a far greater threat from this chilling effect than from a few salacious Facebook wall posts or poorly planned Twitter missives.

Social media is exploding in popularity all around us, which should be a wonderful thing. But instead, this influx of coworkers, parents, clients and teachers has made people paranoid about being themselves.

Yes, yes, of course young people should be careful with the information they share online -- as much for security reasons as for job protection. But they should also be free to express themselves without constant fear of reprisal by puritanical rubberneckers.

I'm as guilty as anyone. I find myself being afraid to use even PG-13 language for fear of offending a paying client or Web-savvy grandparent.

But repeat after me: "We're all adults here."

Adults use salty language. Adults have political opinions. Adults drink alcoholic beverages.

We can do our best to avoid this stuff hitting the Web in places that overlap with our professional lives, but we can't stop it.

I used to have a theory that we'd all be saved by "mutually assured destruction" — ie, let he among us without sin throw the first drunken Flickr party pics.

These days, I worry we're far more likely to hide behind the protection of "mutually assured dullness." At that point, we can probably save ourselves some irony by no longer calling it social media.

Today's photo credit: PhoenixDailyPhoto on Flickr.