'Hiding' your Friends...

Do you often wish you could hide your friends from other people? Are you ashamed of them (no, not really!)? Well, in the Facebook, you can! Well, sort of. You can hide your friends list from people who are not your friends, and stop the 'Facebook follow' dead in its tracks.

Here's how:

On your profile page, find the friends box (under your picture). Click on the little blue pencil in the corner which allows you to change settings. When the pop-up box appears, you will see a place to select whether or not you want to show your friends list to everyone. Uncheck that little box. Et voila, your friends list is only visible to your friends from now on.

Also, you can check to see what is visible to non-friends and friends when you edit your privacy settings. In the privacy settings options, you will see at the top of the page (or near it), this option: Preview my Profile. If you click on it, you see what is visible to the general public, and you can also type in one of your contacts to see what is visible to them.

Cool, eh?

First Facebook Post

Okay, my first hint/advice about the Facebook is regarding the really annoying ads. And this is something I came across by accident, to be honest. Here's how I have a Facebook page with no ads. Zero. Nothing at all.

• Step 1: I use Mozilla Firefox (here's the link: Firefox). I really like Firefox for a number of reasons, and this is one of them:
• Step 2: Install AdBlocker Plus (link: AdBlocker Plus). It is an extension for Firefox which blocks ads, much like the name suggests. You have to set it up, but that is (if I remember correctly) easy enough. Once installed, you can even click on ads that do show up (I haven't seen any, to be honest) and block them.
• Step 3: Enjoy an ad-free Facebook experience.

Perhaps you will find this as useful as I find it. I really hate ads. Especially because they are never, ever for anything useful, or anything I might like. When I opened Facebook in Google Chrome this morning, there was an ad for some 'avoiding a divorce' page thingy. Really annoying.

In addition: did you know that you can stop ads from using your name, or at least showing detials to people (on your Friends list)? Go to Settings> My Account> Facebook Adverts, and then in the drop-down list where it says "Allow ads on platform pages to show my information to" select: "No one" [the options are: "only my friends" or "no one."]

So, I think I might be caving....

I am considering (again) this whole Facebook thing. I have avoided it in the past as a time-waster and not much use. But there is some good to it, too. So many of my family and friends are on the Facebook that it would be interesting to keep up with them, especially those that I do not see or talk to regularly.

The biggest reason for me to start the Facebook is to find out how to use it well. So often you hear of people simply using it because it's there. It's like most, if not all, new technologies. Too often it is simply adopted without reflection. Especially by the tech-savvy younger generations. If we have some people who can do the research, do the thinking, and then find a way of using the technology well, properly, and in a manner befitting a Christian, I think this would greatly benefit those who do not or cannot do this work.

Not, of course, that I am fully qualified for this. I do not have such illusions of myself. But I'd like to try.

So here is what I propose. I am going on the Facebook (and yes, I've been calling it the Facebook just for fun). I will look at it, figure things out, and see what all the fuss is. And I will blog about what I find, what I think, and whatever else comes up regarding this Facebook thing.

In the end, if I find that I can't use it well, then I'll just delete my account, and resume life as normal (or, rather, as it is now--Facebookless and happy).

In addition, I am rethinking how I use labels on my blog. I am playing with the idea of having a set of content about which I will post (so there is some continuity), and use the labels to identify which of this content I am posting about. I have already started an 'Adventures in Education' label (see last post), and now I will start an 'Adventures with Facebook' label. Hopefully that will help my few readers navigate my blog more effectively. For if technology does not help us, it's not worth using. Perhaps. I'll have to give that more thought.