With over 500 million users, Facebook is not just popular. It’s also filled with features and customization options that most don’t even know about. Learn a few of the Facebook tricks below, and you can can separate yourself from the crowd and increase your productivity at the same time.
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Keyboard Shortcuts
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Sure, Facebook is a Web site. But it’s surprisingly keyboard friendly. For instance, if you use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on Windows, you can hold down the Alt key, tap the number 4 (Alt-4), release the keys, and press Enter to open your message list (and then Tab through the messages). The same sequence, but using different numbers, accesses other parts of the Facebook screen. Alt-1, Enter goes to your Home page; Alt-2, Enter goes to your profile; Alt-3, Enter lets you view Friend requests; Alt-M, Enter starts a new message; Alt-?, Enter places your cursor in Facebook’s Search box. If you’re using Firefox, the same shortcuts apply, but you’ll have to hold down both Alt and Shift rather than just Alt.
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Search Secrets
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There’s a good deal of power hidden behind Facebook’s simple search box. Search filters, for example, let you both narrow the results of your searches and refine searches so that you can find information in Facebook that would otherwise be impossible to unearth.
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To access the filters, first enter a search term in Facebook’s Search box, but instead of pressing Enter, click the magnifying glass icon to the right of the Search box itself. Doing so takes you to a screen that lists search filters in the left-hand column. These filters include groups, for narrowing your search result to relevant Facebook groups; apps, for displaying only Facebook apps relevant to a search term; posts by friends, for honing in on relevant posts made by those on your friends list; and posts…