put a smile on your facebook

Since being on Twitter I have found a fair amount of vitriol for Facebook, variously described as a dinosaur (@simonpegg), twatty (@indiaknight) and a tree for cats to piss on (@SanyaV, shamelessly paraphrased). As previously discussed I’m not very good at Angry; often I feel this is a failing but in this case I do think it’s not that difficult to enjoy the various forms of social networking on offer to us today without having an apoplexy.

Facebook is a place for friends. Twitter is a place to say random stuff. MySpace is a place to look up bands you have heard on the radio. Let’s all co-exist man, yeah?

Privacy
This is very dull. Facebook has admittedly cocked it up a bit, and will doubtless change its policy soon. In the meantime, if you are bothered about privacy, this is what to do:
1. Go to settings, select all and change to ‘friends only’. It will take less than a minute.
2. If there are things you don’t want anyone to know, don’t fill those fields in.

Applications
Many of us hate our news feed being clogged up with Farmville, City Life, Mafia Wars and the like. But many of our friends enjoy playing these games. The important thing to remember is, they don’t hate us. They just want other players to help them raise their barn, or sting a cartel, or whatever. For a happy life:
1. Click ‘hide’ by their post on your news feed. Hide the application, or the person if they are a repeat offender.
2. If their use of these games has moved you to genuine hatred, delete them.

Friends
As previously said, that’s what Facebook is for. I used to accept friend requests from people I didn’t like that much, just to be polite. But I have since deleted them and I am confident that I could tell you why I am friends with every single person on my friends list. I may not chat to them all every day but I have a genuine interest in seeing their updates. We used to lose touch with people unless they were directly in their lives. Old friends aren’t always old friends for a reason (@carrozo). In this case:
1. Don’t be friends with people you don’t like.

2. Take an interest - you never know who you might catch up with.

NB Don't be friends with companies - they will just send you endless crappy marketing messages.

Photos
Ok. So you don’t like endless baby/wedding photos. But here’s the thing. People who have got married/had a baby/holiday/new dog want to share their pictures. You know what I’m going to say.
1. If you know someone has got married/had a baby lately, hide them from your news feed. You can always reinstate them once they get over it and start bitching about their new spouse/brat.
2. Same goes for emotional status updates.

Event invites/Quizzes/Things To Like
I can’t do anything about these. Let’s get over it. You can always get Tweetdeck so you can just have a status feed and never check the actual site – but we’re trying to stay happily connected, right?

With love to friends, foes and followers all xx