You’ve probably been checking Facebook quite a bit recently – from winter break doldrums to spring semester “syllabus” week, we’ve had a lot of free time to peruse the ‘book. You may have just added a ton of new friends or uploaded a gazillion photos of you and your pals ice skating over break. If your social networking has peaked, you should consider cleaning up your profile. Here are some pointers for when you go Mr. Clean on your account:
Filter your Friends –Are you one of those people who have more than 2,000 Facebook friends and admittedly less than half as many in real life? Then a spring cleanout may be effective – go through your list of friends a chunk at a time and unfriend those who you barely talk to, barely encounter, or plain and simple have never actually met.
You can also get your hands dirty with friend lists – this feature allows you to organize your friends by acquaintances, close buddies, colleagues at work, etc. These lists will appear on your chat box as well, so with one click you can forever go offline to your tenacious little cousin or that co-worker who won’t stop talking to you!
Patch up your Profile –The information tab on your profile can be an easily neglected display of yourself. Perhaps you made your info page when you were 16 and never bothered to check it since. Surely your employment history, musical tastes, and other preferences have changed in the last few years. Dust off an outdated info page to better reflect yourself by deleting all those silly pages you liked when you were a tween and adding the music, books, and movies you’ve enjoyed recently.
While you’re at it, give a quick check to the other aspects of your public profile – are there any embarrassing photos you don’t want up? Untag them. Do you cringe at the thought of your mother seeing your boyfriend’s drunken 2 am wall post? Limit the visibility of your posts under the “Privacy Settings” tab.
Narrow your News Feed –For many of us, the News Feed is the first thing we see when we log into Facebook. It is only logical that it provide us with the most pertinent updates to our lives. Do you really care if Missy the music fanatic listened to “California Gurls and 65 other songs on Spotify?” Luckily a drop-down arrow appears on the top right corner of every feed story you hover over; this arrow gives a list of options for you to hide specific stories or unsubscribe completely from Missy the music fanatic.
Purging your Facebook benefits you because you can feast your eyes on a much less cluttered profile. However, it may also help you in the future when you start those summer job applications and your employer checks your online trail. You will thank yourself for the dirty work!
Photo sources:
Businessinsider.com (http://static8.businessinsider.com/image/4df2394149e2ae4b6e1c0000/mr-cle…)
Userscripts.org (http://s3.amazonaws.com/uso_ss/5197/large.png?1263587429)
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