Social Networking – Taming The “Essential” Beast!

We all spend several hours on it, but do we really know how to make the most of it?Love it or hate it, there really isn’t a way to ignore it. Social Networking (read Facebook, Twitter and then some) has made a space for itself in our lives. Here are some tips to help you slim down, widen out and secure your entire social experience.

Multiple Social Networks, In One Application

Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are made available within one application, TweetDeck. TweetDeck helps save time by integrating multiple time-lines into one, and make replying less pain. You can download TweetDeck for iOS devices, Android, PC and also as an add-on for Google Chrome.

Download Link: http://www.tweetdeck.com

Tweak Who Sees What On Facebook

Facebook’s privacy settings, by default, aren’t very secure and some tweaks will make your profile a lot more secure.

Click on the Account tab on your Facebook home page.

Goto Privacy Settings

Here you can set who can see what on your profile (relationship status, posts, photos, etc.), who can’t, and what all should be completely hidden.

Secure Facebook

In the account settings, you get two critical settings, which we suggest you should enable. First is “Secure Browsing (https)” and the second is “send me an email when an unrecognized device tries to access my account”. These will be found in Account > Account Settings > Account tab > Account Security.

View Your Profile As A Friend

With Privacy Settings it gets really confusing who can see what. So Facebook lets you see how your profile looks to a particular friend?

View Photos The Old School Way

Don’t like the new photo viewer on Facebook? You can quickly revert to the old one. Open the first picture in a series in a new tab you will go back to the traditional method of viewing pictures.

Get Rid Of Unused Applications

Any applications you may have downloaded but aren’t using anymore, do pose a risk to your data. Delete them! Click on the Account tab on your Facebook home page, go to Privacy Settings > Applications. Select each application, and define what data it can access, or delete them completely.

IM The New Hangout Zone

While IM wasn’t really considered an integral part of social networking, it has now joined the party. For Blackberry users, the Blackberry Messenger (BBM) rocks. The rest of the smart-phone community can use WhatsApp on their phones. The messenger gets registered via the sim-card, and instantly connects to everyone on your contacts list who is registered on WhatsApp.

Tagging Multiple People

Got a post that may be interesting to a bunch of friends? Tag them in that post itself. To tag, write “@” and then the friend name. You will see the name get highlighted in blue once the tagging is complete.

Reply by Email

Whenever a Facebook friend sends you a message or comment on your pictures, it also shows up on your email inbox, provided notifications are on. You can reply to that from the email itself and the comment will be added to your tagged photo. If you aren’t getting these mails, activate email notifications in the account settings. Psst this is a great way to get around office-wide Facebook blocking.

Shorten URL And Save Characters

If you post quite a few links on Twitter (and even Facebook), better get a URL shortener extension for your web browser. Once installed, click on the icon copy the shortened URL into the post and voila! Save characters and time.

Download Link: http://goo.gl/WFwhv