10 Facebook Features You Might Not Know About

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1. Favourites List

Your favourites list is what shows up on the left in Facebook under News Feed, Messages, Events and Browse. Use the favourites list to keep the pages, groups and interest lists that matter to you most on the sidebar in the order you want them in. When they are in the sidebar, you can easily see if there is new posts or notifications to take care of so you can turn the group notifications off if you want and just manually check there.

To add to your favourites list, you can do it a few ways. If a group or interest list is showing up in the Facebook left sidebar, you can hover over it’s name to see a wheel. Click the wheel to add or remove from favourites. Alternatively click on groups or interests or pages to see a list of all of them and then select which ones are in your favourites list. You can rearrange your favourites list as well, to group together similar things or put certain things near the top. Just hover over one of the items in your favourites and click on the wheel and choose rearrange. Drag and drop the way you want and then click the little word done at the end of your favourites list.

2. Schedule Facebook Page Posts Up to Almost 6 Months in Advance

You can schedule posts on your Facebook Pages (but not profile or groups) for almost 6 months in advance. Create your status the way you normally would by including text, photos and/or links and then click the little clock to pick a date and time. When you click on the calendar to pick a date, it will tell you the farthest in advance you can go. When you start typing a time, it will give you suggestions. If what you want isn’t suggested, just keep typing how you want. Once you have some scheduled posts, a spot will appear where you can see how many are schedule, when the next one will go live and you can click to view them.

3. News Feed: Top Stories or Most Recent

Your news feed is by default set to show top stories. You may have noticed that you see a post again and again after more people have liked or commented on it, even though it was posted days ago. That is why. If you want to see yours news feed in order from most recent to least recent, you can change your newsfeed to show most recent. You can always change it back, or alternatively, if you log out of Facebook, the next time you log in, it will be back to top stories.

4. Year in Review and A Look Back

These are two relatively new features to Facebook and when they first came out, it seemed like everyone was trying it out and posting them. Year in Review is a collection of your biggest moments on Facebook from the past year such as life events, popular posts etc. It’s a mostly static page which includes your top 20 posts from the past year.

A Look Back compiles your highlights since joining Facebook. Most people will get it as a movie but if you haven’t been on Facebook long or haven’t shared much, you might get a collection of photos or a thank you card. Below is just a screenshot of my movie as it starts.

5. Hide From News Feed

If you are sick of seeing statuses about games (Farmville, Criminal Case etc) or you don’t want to see updates from a certain person or page in your news feed at all but you don’t want to unfriend or unfollow them, you have the option of hiding from your news feed. When you see a status you don’t care for, click on the little arrow and choose hide from news feed. The choices it shows depends on what it is. Even though I’m a game lover in general, I don’t play Facebook games and the constant posts about them got annoying. I’ve hidden all from most of the games my friends play. I had to HUNT my news feed to find this post so I could take a screenshot.

 

6. Your App List

Every time you log in to another site with Facebook or use an app on Facebook whether it be a game or you enter a sweepstakes, that app is added to your app list. If you are no longer using a game, a website or a contest is over, you should remove it from your app list to minimize the sites that have access to your information and account.  For the apps that are naturally a part of Facebook such as News Feed, Messages and Events, you can’t delete them but you can choose whether they show in your favourites or not. The extra ones you added later you can remove. Make any changes by clicking on the little wheels to the right.

7. Interest Lists

You can use interest lists to group together Facebook pages with similar topics or from a certain group of people so you can see a news feed of JUST those pages. For example I have an interest list of Facebook pages that have to do with blogging or social media so I can see what’s new with my favourite blogging/social media pages all in one place. You can follow interest lists others make too. I follow lists for three different blogging groups I’m in. This way I can see what’s new with bloggers from my favourite groups and easily give their pages support with my likes and comments without wading through other statuses.

Interest lists can be public, only for friends or private. I have one titled Content Curation with pages that have funny memes, photos and interesting facts that I might want to share with my Facebook pages when I need some content fillers. You can choose the types of statues from those pages you’ve added to show. There is a section for Interest lists in the left sidebar on Facebook.

8. News Feed For Your Facebook Page

You may have noticed that you can like a page as your page. This doesn’t count towards the like count for a Facebook page but shows up in the pages that this page likes section. However if you switch from using Facebook as your personal profile to using Facebook as one of your pages, you can see a news feed of all the pages YOUR page has liked. Than you can like, comment or share AS your page.

9. You Can Archive All Your Facebook Data

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Facebook servers crashed one day and everything ever posted on it was lost? What would happen to all those photos, statuses, cute kid quotes, milestones and other things you’ve shared? Facebook gives you the option to back up your Facebook data but most people don’t know about it because it’s hard to find. The link to it is on your General Facebook Settings page in plain text at the bottom.

Your downloadable data isn’t just your statuses and photos but also your about me text, your account status history, the ads you have licked on, your deleted friends, list of friends, IP addresses you’ve logged into Facebook through, all your likes, notes, messages, privacy settings, searches you’ve done on Facebook and MORE!

When you click to start your archive, you must re enter your password and then give them time to compile it all. You will receive an email when it’s available for download and they will check your identity again.

10. Graph Search

You can search all kinds of interesting things with graph search on Facebook but it only works when you are using Facebook on the desktop in English. Just click in the search bar at the top and it gives you some ideas to start with.

As you type it changes and gives you more suggestions. You can find all sorts of things. The Facebook Graph Search Help section can give you a better idea of how to use it. I was able to find groups about blogging that my friends had joined. The three shown below I am already a member of but there were others I haven’t joined yet. I can further filter it to see another topic, or groups joined by a certain friend of mine or all kinds of things. Just play around! Got a Facebook friend you really admire and look up to? See what groups he or she has joined to see if you want to join!

So there you have it, 10 Facebook features you might not have known about. It’s amazing what you can learn when you click around and explore.

Tell Me in the Comments: Which of these as new to you? Do you see yourself using any of these features now?

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