Media: A Better Facebook Experience:

With Twitter overtaking Facebook, it was a great time to look at Facebook. Where is there need for improvement? What are they doing right?Here are three things to improve your own Facebook experience.Configure ItOne can sometimes feel pinned when they first sign on to Facebook if they don’t tweak their settings. In fact, the great thing about Facebook is how customizable it is. You can turn off many applications that are bothersome, including the option to have pictures you’ve been tagged in beamed out all of your friends. If someone is posting way too many quizes or dumb links you can simply “hide” all of their updates from your main page.Reconnect With Old Friends, LoversThe first 24 hours you sign onto Facebook will blow your mind. That’s what someone told me recently, explaining why he never uses the site. He also hates all of the lack of privacy. But there is much good about being somewhere where anyone can find you if they’re looking. Sooner or later everyone is going to be online and many of them will end up on Facebook. There is a slight chance that the social networking site to go the way of Myspace and become kind of “over,” but for now, there is no reason to think that Facebook won’t become bigger and bigger. So why not enjoy the roots that are growing longer and stronger?I’ve reconnected with people I knew in elementary school, men I dated for a short period of time, relatives, lost friends. In some ways, Facebook feels like the best thing ever invented. You can be in touch with people without having to make false promises about “getting together.” Just being on Facebook seem to be enough. You wish each other happy birthdays, you comment occasionally on photos, you click the thumbs up to tell people how much you “like” this update or that but beyond that, not much is demanded of you. Get a JobYou can either get yourself hired or get a job for a friend simply by putting out the word to your network and your network’s network. It doesn’t even feel sleazy or inappropriate. While it may seem like too much information to dump on your friends, most people are willing to help out if they can. And if they aren’t, they pass it on.Three terrible ways to use Facebook:Keep Facebook and Twitter separate. They don’t belong together and are designed to do different things. Now, if someone is updating their Facebook with their Twitter site I will probably hide their Facebook postings because it feels like sloppy seconds. Twitter is a real time thing, Facebook is a more complex experience. Stop with the quizes already. If you continue to partake on a regular basis with quizes and dumb games, please adjust your settings so that the results are seen only by you. And if you don’t, be prepared for your friends to hide all of your updates. Just saying.To pick up women or men. Facebook doesn’t work well as a singles hub, not in the same way Myspace does. It isn’t designed that way because it’s designed to make your private business public. Do you really want your dating activity out there for all to see? No, I didn’t think so.