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Thursday
Feb182010
Three Ways to Manage Your Attention with Facebook
Young Urban ProfessionalIt took me awhile but I have become a big evangelist for Facebook. It's now my primary source of information. I suspect, from looking at the data, that this is true for millions - although I bet most don't even realize it. Nielsen reports that the average American spends seven hours a month on Facebook - that's staggering when you think about bounce rates and how mission-oriented web users are. (Note - Nielsen is a client.)
The main reason I am digging more into Facebook these days is that, in an age of infinite noise, the site actually helps me manage my attention. What's more it makes it easier for me to connect with streams I care about from brands, news sources and thinkers like Jeremiah Owyang and Om Malik. I also like the richness of the conversation and how it's easy to read, navigate and respond.
Still, as great as Facebook is, the site has its annoyances. You need to dig in a bit to tweak it. Once you do, however, I find it becomes a really powerful way to manage your attention. Here are three ways I am making Facebook rock my world ....
Tune out Inane Updates
First, while games are huge on Facebook, I really don't care about my friends' gaming activity. I am not alone. "I don't care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia" has attracted over five million fans. Thankfully, the New York Times today details how you can tune out say Farmville updates from friends...
"On your regular News Feed, you can also weed out the constant updates from any of the farming, organized crime, vampire, space, fantasy or casual games your friends may be playing on Facebook. Just move the mouse cursor to the end of the first line from an update from say, Mafia Wars, and click the Hide button that appears. A box pops up giving you the option to either hide game updates (or the friend) from your News Feed."
Organize Pages Into Lists and Use the Search Box
I have fanned more than 350 pages on Facebook. You read that right. The reason is that I treat Facebook as my primary newsreader. I want to see these updates in my real-time stream.
Still, if you have fanned more than a few pages, I would recommend setting up lists to make this all manageable. I have set up several lists that I navigate from my phone as well as on the web site. These include lists for client pages and people, news sources/reporters and more. Lists help keep Facebook in check from becoming another source of overload.
Also, don't forget the search box. Often, when all I have time is a a quick scan of the headlines, I head to the box and type in one or more of my favorite sites. This is harder to do on say Twitter. Plus Facebook offers summaries.
Set Your Priorities
In an age of information abundance, quality and signals rule. Still, each individual's definition of what is signal varies. Once you find individuals or pages that add value to your life, you can prioritize them in your feed. Head down to the bottom of your news feed and click on "Edit Options." There you can tell Facebook which people and pages to show more of.
Right now, this is how I am tracking the Olympics. I have asked Facebook to prioritize updates from four Olympic-related pages that I have fanned. Once the games are over I will turn this off. But for now, it's a great way to keep up with the news.
How are you using Facebook? Are you like me in that you're spending more time on the site or are you in the opposite situation? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Also if you log in with Facebook the comments can be shared on your profile and mine.
Reader Comments (19)
I find Facebook useful to keep up with both personal connections and with interesting information from professional connections whom I know. I use FB lists obsessively -- which is one reason I dislike the home page redesign, because it's it more difficult to get to lists or reorder my lists. Solution to that is Firefox buttons that takes me to the list of my choice.I don't engage in FB games, so awhile ago hid all the game updates. That boosted my signal to noise ratio significantly. I get enough entertainment from seeing the various groups my FB friends join.
Using Buzz to explain how to better use Facebook! I like that! And thanks for the suggestions. So far, Twitter and Facebook are my main socia media for interacting, with social bookmarking still central for my purposes.
I've been trying ro figure out get ANY feed from peeps I want for over a year. If what I am reading is right you solved it. FB help certainly never provided that information for any of it's past two versions. So thanks to you
So... is Facebook "the new Lifestreaming" or what?
Dave, you raise a good question. I have actually contemplated changing the name of this site to the Steve Rubel Stream. The model works - it's a hub for anything longer than a tweet and it syndicates to different social networks depending on context. But these days I engage with my content more in other venues. One that I plan to do more on is our Facebook page - http:///www.facebook.com/edelman.
PROTIP: Instead of hiding updates from those annoying applications, block them entirely. This will prevent your friends from sending you annoying invites from them, from using them to post on your wall, and will also prevent your information from being used by those apps in any way just because your friend uses them. To block an application, the next time you see an update from one of those, notice that the "from FarmVille" or whatever is a link. That will take you to the Application's main informational page. There you will find a link to block that application.
I love using lists to separate my personal and work/industry connections. I hadn't thought of using them to better organize Pages, that's a good idea. In terms of setting priorities, I wonder if in addition to trying to get users to fan their Pages, some will also try encouraging them to "show more of us" in their news feed settings
Thanks Steve. Brilliant tip about hiding applications that enabled me to turn off all that Farmville stuff.
VERY useful post. Like you, I increasingly use Facebook not just for personal connections, but also for business/professional colleagues. And, for filtering news and information. I use the "hide" feature liberally turning it on and off for pages and people depending on my time availability and interest, and their use of the medium.I did set up lists with varying privacy setting for my connections - work, family, etc. But I've since let go of privacy concerns and got rid of lists giving everyone access to everything.However, I didn't think to use the list feature for the fast growing number of pages I fan, but will now. Thanks so much for sharing your insights!
"Brilliant tip about hiding applications that enabled me to turn off all that Farmville stuff."Brilliant tip? It was in the freaking ny times. Honestly Steve, if you just discovered that basic facebook tip you're not an evangelist, you're a newbie. It makes me question you know what the hell you're talking about.
Thank you, thank you! Finally got the Mafia and over zealous farmers off my back - thank you again!
Definitely intrigued, your second suggestion laid out a whole new approach for my use of Facebook. One question, assuming I have subscribed to 50+ organizations' pages and I want to share one of their status updates beyond facebook, say Twitter or something else - now what? Have you run across an app for this or still just good old copy and paste?
Daniel, I haven't.
The News Feed / Set Your Priorities thing needs to go at least one step further. Ever since the latest FB redesign I am getting a note on EVERY SINGLE BIT of my friends' activity. Little blurbs telling me what they have commented on, whom they have friended, etc. have pushed updates that I actually want to read further down the page (or "below the fold" to use that Olde Tyme term). What would be super neat is more extensive customization where I can see, for example, actual updates ONLY. And leave out the bits about whom friends have friended, etc.
Facebook's ubiquity continues apace. A key opportunity I see for the company is improvement of its own search engine and back end keyword analysis. Then it becomes a place for discovery as well as connectivity. A topic I have posted on here. http://bit.ly/cSyxxn
I think club join requests need a brief summary of the club itself when you receive a join suggestion from a friend so you can decide whether you want to join.
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Spending long hours on Facebook or Twitter lead us to don't want to drive our attention to other resources to look for something else so I find your advices pretty useful. Optimizing research on social networks is important for businesses. I suggest using TweetDeck!
From hating Facebook, I have come to see it as a better version of FriendFeed. If you use apps like RSS Graffiti, its a lifestream that drives traffic back to the original content.I may (to my horror) start using my facebook page as my primary identifier in comments.