Facebook has unleashed their latest version of Open Graph. With 60 apps ready at launch, get ready for your News Feed to become a non-stop barrage of food photos, song recommendations and movie reviews. Oh dear God, how do I make it stop?
If you, or some of your friends uses a music streaming service like Rdio, you’ve already seen what the newest version of Open Graph is capable of. If you’re into music and seeing what your friends are listening too, it’s pretty great. But now imagine that your friend is really into fashion and posting photos of themselves in their favourite outfits. Those posts will start appearing in the Ticker and if Facebook decides that this is information that you might find interesting, it’ll show up in your News Feed. Here’s how to manage these apps as a user and as a someone who is friends with an app user.
The User
When you sign up to use an app you are presented with a choice. You can share posts from the app with everyone, a selection of friends, or just keep them to yourself. If you think your friends are interested in the app information you’re going to inflict upon them, go ahead and choose the sect that will enjoy your posts. If it’s an app that you know will only interest you, choose Only Me.
If you decide later that you no longer want an app to post to the Ticker and News Feed, you can adjust an app after it’s been installed. Here’s how:
Navigate to Account Settings >Apps
Click on Edit next to the app you want to adjust.
Under “Post to Facebook as me” click on Remove.
The app will continue to add information to your Timeline about your activity within the app, but you won’t be bothering your friends. If even Timeline posts are too much for you, you can remove those as well in the same panel above. At that point though, you might want to ask why you even installed the app to begin with.
On your Timeline, you can edit what is seen by selecting an apps subject box and clicking on the pencil in the top right hand corner. Remove posts, check on individual posts, or remove the app all together.
The Friends of the User
If you’re lucky, most of these apps won’t show up in your News Feed. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine if an app’s updates would interest you before throwing them into your News Feed. They’ll still show up in the Ticker though. If you’re unlucky enough to have an app that you detest show up in your News Feed from a friend, you can quickly kill all updates from that app.
On an update, hover over the right hand corner of the post. A small arrow pointing down should appear.
Select “Hide all by [app]”
You shouldn’t be bothered by that app ever again. This works for all apps, so if you’re being bombarded by Farmville app updates, you can hide those as well.