Over the past few weeks, Facebook have been consistently releasing a number of features that are designed to make the user’s experience more enjoyable or more private, enabling them to use the popular social networking site for the things they want to. From turning your friend’s profile pictures into emoticons to hiding posts from your boss to creating a top-secret group, there are plenty of ways that you can enhance your own experience.
Turning Profile Pictures Into Emoticons
This is a cute little trick, which is only available in Facebook Chat at the moment, that allows you to create emoticons using the profile pictures of your friends, the logos of brands and the profile pictures of Facebook pages that you have liked. In order to create the emoticon, you will need to go to the profile page of the person or brand, look for the personalized part of the URL and copy it. Then, paste into the Chat window surrounded by double box brackets (like [[this]]).
Making Posts Invisible To Individuals Or Groups
This is another neat little trick that allows you to hide your posts (including photos) from a certain person or from a group of people. You can achieve this by changing the privacy settings of the post before you hit enter; click on the drop-down menu in the bottom right of the post box. Once you have selected either Public or Friends, click the Custom option. To hide the post from individuals, type their names in and click 'save changes'.
Making A Top-Secret Group
This is a great feature that allows you to create a secret Facebook group that only you (and people you invite) can see. On your home page, hover over the menu on the left-hand side until the 'See more…' option appears; click it. There should be a Groups heading with an option to 'Create Group…'; click it. A pop-up window should appear where you can name the group and add members. Before clicking 'Create' you will need to click the 'Secret' option.
Why not give some of Facebook's newest features a try for yourself and let us know whether they have enhanced your experience or whether you would prefer to social network without them.
