New Post: How to Block Applications Like Farmville
Update: Mashable, The Day After: HOW TO: Block FarmVille on Facebook
The NYT ran an article this week explaining how to manage your Facebook News feed. The author wrote:
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.
That’s not exactly what you need to do.
(1) Identify an update from a game (Mafia Wars, Farmville, Island Paradise and the like).
(2) Move your cursor over the update — anywhere in the update block. This action is called a “mouseover” and it will reveal the word “Hide” in the upper right hand corner of the update block.
(3) Click the word Hide. The update will be replaced with something like this:
(4) Hide your friend or the application. Hiding the application means you won’t see it again from any friend. Hoorah!
Updated: 11.14 AM Sunday
The operative word here is hide. It is an easier way (interface-wise) to reduce the noise in your news feed, but it is not a “block.” That is, these hidden applications do not show up in your list of applications that are “never allowed to post any stories.” I think that this implementation privileges application developers over the Facebook community. Moreover, some of these “hidden” applications show up in my “recently used” applications page. What??
Updated 11.35 AM Sunday
Hmmm. I just blocked Mafia Wars at the source … and it still doesn’t show up in my list of applications that are “never allowed to post any stories.” If a “block” doesn’t result in an application being listed here, what does? How did all of those other applications get there? I just realized that Farmville is not on this list, either, but I blocked it ages ago.
3 replies on “How To Hide Farmville (and such) On Facebook”
Hi, Jessie — yes, I know it’s possible to group friends and manage the content that they see. I’m not sure how you add the filter for applications, however.
To set up lists, go to Accounts -> Manage Friends.
At the top of the page you’ll see a button “create new list.” You can create as many as you like.
Friends that are not on lists will have a dropdown to the right that says “Add to list.” You can also use this drop down to create a new list on the fly. Friends can belong to multiple lists.
For managing the privacy settings of friend lists, see this article: http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/
There’s an option, too, as a Farmville user, to create a list and then only have my Farmville feeds go to that list. Alas, I have yet to figure out how, though I know of someone who manages her outflow as such.
[…] and such) On Facebook 2010 February 21 tags: facebook by kegill Facebook has made it relatively easy to “hide” application announcements — to keep them from cluttering your news feed. As others have pointed out, “hide” […]