Tag: Facebook

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Tips

Show your status offline to some friends in Facebook Chat [New]

Facebook keeps on changing the interface of Facebook chat and they did it again and added an old feature again, that is to show your status offline to some friends and online to some. Now you also have an option of showing your status offline to one friend or a group of people using Facebook lists. Let’s see how you can do it.

Showing your status offline to some friends:

To show your status offline to some friends or a single person, open his/her chatbox and click on the gear at the top of that chatbox. After that click second option i.e ‘Go Offline to’. See the picture below,

Showing your status offline to a group of friends:

For this you first have to make a list of friends whom you don’t want to chat with. Click here to know more about lists. You can also add people to restricted lists and hide yourself and your private content on Facebook. After that click on the gear at the bottom right of the page and select ‘Advanced Settings’. Then add the name of that list and click ‘Save’. See the pic below,

Hope that helps, please drop a comment below in case you need any help. 🙂

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News

Facebook to Finally Introduce Verified Accounts!

Facebook has over 800 million users and that makes it a great database for identity. Facebook only recently allowed ‘subscriptions’ which allow users to follow public updates from another person. This is the reason famous people did not figure on Facebook much (though this did drive interest in Fan Pages on Facebook).

As reported by TechCrunch, Facebook will soon verify accounts much like Google+ or Twitter does. This is probably a way to get famous people enticed into using Facebook more publicly. This will allow celebrities to show their screen names and real names will not be required.

The real name will still be displayed in the about section, which might defeat the purpose. A point to be noted is that there will be no verified sign like Twitter and Google+ has on profiles.

Twitter is still the place were famous writers, actors, sportsperson tend to connect with fans. The verified sign, next to a Twitter account gives users a signal that this is a real account and not a fake one. Google+ has also introduced something similar.

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Facebook’s tryst with real names

Facebook has a somewhat of a chequered past regarding users being allowed only real names. Facebook allowed special characters in real names on profiles. It then banned the use of special charachters. It also has a big list of banned words, that are not allowed to be used in real names. That in the past has led to inadvertent deletion of accounts because the real name of the person were included in the banned list.

I have read more than a couple of times that Facebook has gone about trying to woo celebrities to adopt it. But it might end up doing something like Google+ where celebrities signed up but hardly updated their accounts after a while and stuck to Twitter to connect with friends.

What do you think? Will verified accounts on Facebook make you subscribe to more people? Do drop in your comments.

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News

Angry Birds Finally Arrives on Facebook!

Angry Birds is one of the most popular games in recent times. The game has literally millions of people completely addicted to it. Facebook has been the only platform where you could not play Angry Birds, which was bit strange considering how games have really helped Facebook grow in the past couple of years.

Just visit Angry Birds App on Facebook and start playing the game created specially for Facebook users. The game was supposed to be released on Valentines Day, but it seems they have released it a bit early.

Angry Birds initially started off with as a iPhone phenomenon and it still has premium versions for the iOS platforms. It is now available on Android and other mobile platforms too.

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Lately, Angry Birds has been available on Chrome as an app. Even when Google+ introduced games, it had Angry Birds as a part of it.

Why Facebook needs Angry Birds?

In the recent IPO filed by Facebook, it has claimed that Zynga the company behind social games like Farmville is responsible for about 13% of its revenues. That means social gaming is actually earning the big money for Facebook and having one of the world most famous game on it would not hurt it.

Thanks to Vibin Reddy for the tip.

Link: Angry Birds App on Facebook

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Tips

Automatically Backup your Facebook Photos to Dropbox

On my Facebook account, I have almost everyone I have known in my life. It also is a great place to keep in touch with family and friends who live far away. I often have some nice photos uploaded from my school days uploaded by some friend of my or the other.

Most friends of mine end up tagging me to these photos. I do like to download some of these photos so in case it is taken down, I can still have a copy with me.

I found this nice online tool which allows users to automatically backup photos they are tagged in to a designated folder on Dropbox.

I am using Ifttt, a neat website that allows users to create triggers to carry out actions. In this case whenever someone tags me in a photo, it will set off a trigger. The result will be that the photo will be downloaded into a folder on my Dropbox account.

Creating a Trigger with ifttt

  • First register with ifttt and look up the various recipes.
  • It has many that allows backing up FB photos to Dropbox. My personal choice was this recipe.
  • Now connect your Facebook account and approve the website to access it.
  • Then do the same with your Dropbox account.

Now next time someone tag’s your photo on Facebook, it will automatically trigger a download to your Dropbox. Considering Dropbox is a sync service, I am basically saving all my tagged photos in the cloud available to me anywhere on any computer without necessarily logging into Facebook.

Try out ifttt and its numerous options to create triggers between various online webapps. Do drop in your comments.

Link: Ifttt | FB Photos Backup

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Reviews

Task Management With Facebook and Twitter Contacts – Wunderkit

There are many organisation tools online which help people organize their books marks, reminders and notes. I personally like using Doomi to make quick todo lists on my desktop or Evernote to take notes and create long term tasks.

When an online tool like Wunderlist suggests, that it is a one stop solution to organize your life in a better way, I tend to take it with a pinch of salt. But I got me curious enough to try it out check how useful it would be.

Wunderkit is a online tool that allows users to organize their life and also get their friends from Twitter and Facebook involved. It is currently by invitation only and it certainly seems to be neat and interesting online tool.

Wunderkit Features

  • The webapp allows users to register with their Twitter or Facebook account. One can also add friends via email to a specific work-space.
  • Creating a work-space allows users to create notes and tasks separately.
  • I could also check and make some of my work-spaces as public if I chose to do so. That means I can invite people to view it thanks to a URL.

Why Wunderkit holds promise?

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Most things I could do with Wunderkit, I could with Evernote. So why would users want to try Wunderkit. The reason lies in being social. The focus of Wunderkit is on allowing friends from Facebook or Twitter to create projects. Thanks to Twitter integration, Wunderkit can also be used by people who are anonymous.

I would not recommend a complete move to Wunderkit at the moment as it still is a beta product. Also unlike Evernote, it does not have a desktop app but I guess that will happen very soon.

Video Walkthrough of Wunderkit

Try out Wunderkit and drop in your comments. Also special thanks to R@xit for the tip.

Link: Wunderkit

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News

Facebook testing Photo Viewer which looks just like Google+

Google+ might have borrowed just about every idea from Facebook but it does have a few original ones too. The photo viewer on Google+ displays comments on the side. This allows a lot more comments to be viewed.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook is testing out something that pretty much copies the way Google+ displays its photos.

The current photo-viewer on Facebook is not exactly something I was happy with. That is why I like using this Chrome extension that removes theatre effects from Facebook’s photo viewer.

Is it okay for Google+ and Facebook to copy each other?

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Though every time someone copies a feature from its competitor fans and expert lament or criticism. For instance Google introduced +1 buttons which were clearly inspired from the ‘Like’ buttons. I feel it is sometimes good to copy a really useful and good feature rather than to try to reinvent the wheel.

By copying, I do not mean copying codes or copyrighted content. If Google+ copied elements from Facebook, then Facebook did the same from MySpace. But I do wonder how users will feel if Facebook and Google+ both end up beings clones rather than competitors.

What are your views on Facebook’s new photo viewer being tested? Do drop in your comments.

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News

Facebook IPO is Officially Launched!

Facebook has filed an IPO. It is expected to raise about $5 Billion. Also that might put on the path of breaking the $100 Billion barrier for market valuation. That means chances are that in a few days, Mark Zuckerberg’s company which was started from a college dorm room along with a couple of friends, will be worth a 100 billion dollars.

Facebook’s IPO filing, has revealed some interesting facts about what is the social network all about.

Firstly, on page 18 of the document, it reveals that Zynga the company behind popular Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars is responsible for 12% of its revenues.

It also reveals revenues of $3.7 billion while an income of $1 billion.

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What next for Facebook?

Facebook will probably be using the extra cash it picks up to shore up improvements to its service and its performance against upcoming competitors like Google+ or other older ones like Twitter and LinkedIn. I doubt it will be worrying much about MySpace. 🙂

It would also help Facebook a lot if it improved its image on ‘Privacy’.

With new App sharing on Timelines, we could probably see more targeted ads for brands. We might see more improvements brands being able to interact more with users via Facebook.

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What will be Mark Zuckerberg’s Salary?

I was reading through the IPO document (see link at the end) and found something interesting. It seems Mark Zuckerberg is following in the steps of Steve Jobs, by reducing his base salary to $1.00 form the year 2013. A the moment he earns $500,000 per year.

What are your thoughts on Facebook becoming a public company? Will it spur it to grow more and innovate better or will it lose its edge? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Facebook IPO Prospectus

Categories
Tips

How to get old Facebook photo viewer;disabling theater effect

Most of the people don’t like the new features of Facebook like profile design, ticker, questions, timeline profiles, news feed e.t.c. Personally I think these features are okay and not that much annoying as it used to be. But the only feature that I still don’t like is the theater effects of Facebook’s photo viewer. The older method was better when the photos used to get opened in a new page rather than showing it on the same page. Moreover theater effect also decreases the quality of the picture. But there’s a simple way of disabling this on chrome, firefox or even you can disable it temporarily on any browser, let’s see how you can do it.

For Google Chrome:

If you are using Facebook on Google Chrome then the simplest way to disable Theater effect is to install Revert FB Photo Viewer extension. This will give you back your old photo viewer on Chrome.

For Mozilla Firefox:

For firefox you can use facebook Photo Theater Killer userscript. Before installing this to your Firefox make sure you have Greasemonkey add-on installed. You can also use it on Chrome with Tampermonkey extension.

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Temporarily disabling theater effect (any browser):

Method 1: Open a photo on Facebook. To view it normally without Theater effect just hit F5 key or refresh the page. You will see pics in classic Facebook photo viewer.

Method 2: Open a photo and check its link in the address bar. For example:

Now remove the &type=3&theater part from the end and hit enter. It will temporarily disable the theater effect for that album.

I hope this will make Facebooking better for you! 🙂

Categories
News

You can now officially Hide Ticker from Facebook homepage

Facebook just did a small change in the homepage and added a very useful button there. It’s the “Hide Ticker” button added on the top of the ticker in your sidebar. After the launch of new design the one thing that was annoying the users most is the ticker updates. Though it’s a good way to see updates in real-time but still most of the Facebook users didn’t like it so Facebook officially added an option of hiding the Ticker. Let’s see how you can do it.

Officially hiding ticker from your sidebar:

To hide ticker from your sidebar click on the ‘Hide Ticker’ button. Can’t locate it? Just check out the screenshot below:

Now you don’t need to use unofficial extensions to hide it, simply click a link and it will disappear. Please note that you cannot hide the ticker when chat on sidebar is open.

Thanks a lot Facebook for this feature. 😉

Categories
News

Facebook Starts Shipping Timeline for All Users 4 Months Late!

Remember the famous quote “Real artists ship” attributed to Steve Jobs. It about how all companies have to actually deliver. I also think somewhere down the line, a good product should be shipped in time.

It was in September 2011, when Facebook announced Timelines, a new layout for Facebook. That is now almost four months ago. The promise being that the new Timeline feature would be rolled out within the next 10 days to all Facebook users. Some said it was a knee jerk reaction to Google+, others felt Facebook was reinventing social media.

The world was set for Facebook to do something radical, probably for one last time, as once it has an IPO, such radical changes might be difficult to explain or rather convince to shareholders.

The Timeline Saga

It was initially rolled out to only developers and that hack was used by many to get Timeline layout.

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There were some issues regarding timelines and the wait for it got longer. Apparently a website by the name Timelines.com, had legal issues with Facebook using the term Timelines.

Finally Facebook, did start an international roll-out for all users in New Zealand. It eventually made Timelines available to all users. Though not all users were on the new Timeline layout as they had to opt-in for it.

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Finally, Facebook will be forcing Timelines to all users over the next few weeks. I have mixed feelings about the new layout, as it makes all past post quite easily available for others to look up. We decided to take a poll on our Facebook page about Timelines . Though the number of people voting on it were very few the verdict on if people liked or disliked Timelines stood at 50/50.

What are your views on Timelines? Do drop in your comments.

(via Facebook Blog)