I meant to post this a while back, sorry.
A while back, a coworker was lamenting about how all the execs were loving Facebook and adding all the employees as friends. Well, not all of us, but managers and higher. We thought that was kind of poopy because if you denied a VP-level person as a friend . . well, maybe they’d take it the wrong way.
But on the opposite end- what about if you felt pressured enough to add them, but then realized you don’t want that person to see your status updates and pics (or wall posts, etc).
I had told my coworker that I had already set up lists to deal with all of this and wrote a quick tutorial on how to alter the settings.
But it came up again as more friends had gotten on FB and were mentioning the same problem, so maybe you’ll find this useful.
In a nutshell I did two things.
1) I made as many of my settings as possible as “only friends” can see X.
2) I made a list called “work” or “restricted” and put some people (not all) from “work” in that list and then blocked that list from seeing my photos and status updates.
Yeah, yeah, I know I’m google-able and they could just see the stuff on my blog, or twitter, or flickr, but you get the point.
Anyway, here’s what you do.
Let’s make a list first
(you could skip this and just do part 2 if you don’t need a list)
- -Log into FB
- -Click Friends
- -On the left, click “Make a New List”
- -Name the list something clever and add a person to it (or add a person later)
Now let’s restrict something like Wall Posts
- -Click Home
- -Hover over Settings and click Privacy Settings
- -Click Profile
- -This is where a lot of the settings you want to modify are located.
If you’re very concerned with a lot of stuff, just set things so that only “Friends” can see what you’re doing.
In this example, I want to have my “Friends” see my wall posts, but not a group of certain people
- -Click the drop-down menu under “Wall Posts” and make sure “only friends” is selected.
- -Click the drop-down again and select “Customize”(screenshot)
- -under “Except These People” start typing the name of the list you made (mine is “test-list”, screenshots 1 2)
- -Click Okay, and make sure you click “Save Changes”.
- -Do the same thing for your other settings that you’re worried about.
Something to remember:
You don’t need to use lists if you don’t want to. You could just restrict any individual’s name to an area that you don’t want them to see (those pesky ex’s, vp’s, etc). But then you’d have to remember to keep up with adding their names to things if you make changes.
One other thing:
Some people I know have a “purgatory” list because they get a lot of friend requests and add them, but they may not remember who they are (long-lost friends with new married names perhaps?). So they put them in “purgatory” list until they have some re-established contacts, and then bump them up to full-friend later. So do whatever floats your boat.
