It happens to everyone: After a while, you start to feel like a few people are cluttering up Facebook for you and want to unfriend some. Maybe you just feel like you have too many friends, or maybe you and a friend have legitimately drifted apart. Maybe you had a big falling-out and just need a break. Don’t worry; you can unfriend just like you friend people.
To unfriend someone, do the following:
Go to the person’s Timeline.
Click the Friends button.
A menu appears that is for assigning people to Friend Lists. The last item in this list is Unfriend.
Click the Unfriend link.
A window pops up asking if you’re sure you want to remove this friend.
Click the Remove from Friends button.
Take a moment of silence. Okay, that was long enough.
Lots of people go through periodic friend-cleaning. For example, after changing jobs or moving, you may notice that you want to keep in touch with some people from that chapter in your life; others, you just don’t. Unfriend away.
Facebook has a feature that enables you to send private messages to your friends. Think of it like Facebook e-mail, only your personal e-mail address is not revealed. Even better, you can e-mail those whose e-mail addresses you don’t know. Sending messages to non-Facebook friends is built into the system, allowing for private chatting (instead of posting on public Walls). It’s important to note that while you can follow the easy process outlined below to privately message friends on Facebook on desktop devices, messaging on your smart phone is a bit different and requires the Messenger app.
Tagging is when you write a Facebook status update and provide a link to someone’s personal timeline or business page. When you tag a person or page, that person or business is alerted that you’ve shared something. When people see the update, they can click Jen’s name to visit her personal timeline. Facebook will alert you if you’ve been tagged in a status update.
Tagging a person or page in an update is easy. Type @ and then start typing the name of the person or page you want to tag. For example, if you want to tag Wright’s Media in an update, start typing @Wright’s, and Facebook displays a list of related people and business pages for you to choose from.
Here are a few tips about tagging:
You can tag up to fifty people or pages in a single status update.
When using your timeline, you can tag people when writing a status update or when commenting on a status update.
You can tag business pages even if you haven’t Liked them.
Business pages can’t tag individuals in a status update.
Business pages can tag other pages even if the page hasn’t been Liked.
Business pages can tag an individual in a comment if that individual left a previous comment in the thread. For instance, suppose someone comments on a post at the Crowdshifter business page. If you aren’t Facebook friends with this person, you can’t write a new status update and tag that commenter.
However, because the person commented on a status update, you can now respond to him or her in the comments section of that same thread and tag that person. Facebook lets the person know that he or she was tagged and can read the response.
Facebook’s Friend Finder is a great way to build your Friend List quickly without a lot of work. After you build it a bit, though, what if you find other people who may want to be your friends? Facebook Search offers you the capability to seek out certain friends by name.
Basic Search can be a little confusing because Facebook autocompletes the names that you type and assumes you’re trying to get to your friends’ Timelines. If you’re the type of person who is used to pressing the Enter key to begin a search, this can lead you landing on friends’ Timelines when you meant to search for someone else named James.
Hopefully, you know how to set your default privacy for Facebook status updates and photos, and know that you can set the privacy individually for each status update you share. When you set your privacy to public, you’re essentially allowing anyone on Facebook to see your update — but only friends can comment on those updates, with the following exceptions:
If you post a status update that tags someone, anyone who is friends with the person you tagged can comment on your status update — even if you’re not friends with them.
If you turn on the Follow option for your Facebook account, anyone who follows your updates can see and comment on any public updates.
On a related note, when Facebook released the timeline version of personal profiles, your updates from previous months and years became more readily available. This may or may not be a problem for you, depending on what you’ve shared over the years.
