Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

Tag: facebook

  • Facebook: Exporting your data

    Last week, I wrote about Twitter, that I’ve stopped posting there, and how I went about exporting my posting history. I actually made a similar decision with regards to Facebook back in the end of June. Like I did with Twitter, I also grabbed a copy of my data on Facebook – here’s how:

  • I love IM tools, but email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon

    I’m sure you, like me, have seen the articles over the years. They come around every so often, with headlines saying “<IM TOOL> is THE email killer”, “Death of email spelled by <IM TOOL>”, and “<GENERATION WHATEVER> says no to email, yes to <IM TOOL>”. I’ve seen these headlines for the better part of two…

  • Ensure redundancy for critical systems

    As I’m sure you noticed, Facebook suffered massive downtime to several services last week, including Messenger, Instagram and so on. Such events often serve to highlight what services we have rely on. While I’ve been (at least attempting to) phase out Facebook for some time, there are still some things that I actually need it…

  • Turning on notifications for Facebook posts

    I use Facebook for many things. One of those things is to take advantage of the internet hivemind, and get opinions and recommendations for any number of things, from what tech to get, to where to eat. One thing that annoys me a lot, is when someone posts something irrelevant, just so that they can…

  • On vaguebooking and slacktivism

    Note: This is a translated and re-worked version of a response I made to someone who was annoyed that someone else criticized  the posting of a heart without anything in the way of context to one’s facebook page, supposedly to “raise awareness about breast cancer”. The person made the claim that it had been going…

  • Facebook Groups: Asking prospective members questions

    In last week’s post repeating my view on Facebook Groups, I didn’t mention a fairly new tool that group admins have; an option to ask up to three questions to prospective members. It’s found under Manage Groups -> Edit Group Settings, and the option looks as follows: When you click “Ask questions”, you get this…

  • The biggest problem with Facebook groups

    As I’ve alluded to previously, I administer a few Facebook groups. Groups are one of my favorite Facebook features, and they are useful to communicate with a subset of Facebook users without necessarily having to be friends with them. There’s one problem with groups, however; anyone can add anyone to a group, without their say…

  • Understanding a product revisited

    I would like to revisit my thoughts on understanding the product of news outlets. Some time ago, an acquaintance, who works for a news outlet posted a picture of a newspaper article to his Facebook feed, stating that “…this is journalism. You can’t get it on social media – or on blogs for that matter. Journalism at its best…

  • Facebook adds longed-for admin tool

    Back in september of last year, I lamented the lack of what I view as a crucial admin tool on Facebook; the option to close a thread for comments while leaving the original post there for everyone to read. Since then, this is something I have found myself wanting time and again, as I have been forced…

  • Facebook – Missing Feature: Close thread

    As a Facebook page admin, you have a number of tools. You can delete posts, threads and users, you can add users, and you can pin threads to the top, just to mention a few examples. One thing you can’t do, is close a thread. As admin for several pages, this is becoming a bit of…

  • Facebook Groups: Opt-out, not opt-in

    The way Facebook currently works, people may add others to groups without their approval, essentially making groups opt-out, rather than opt-in. This is a massive problem. It allows people to add others to groups, making it seem like they support the agenda the group is pushing. In case you doubt what I’m saying, this has already happened (link in…