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10 Hidden Features in Facebook

 & Michael Muchmore Contributor

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Hidden Facebook Features

Facebook is the category-killing social network, makes up a quarter of the earth's Web traffic, and can claim nearly three-quarters of a billion users. But many of them don't dig beneath the skin of what the social network can do. There's a ton of hidden Facebook functionality, most of which the average user will never find. PCMag readers, however, want to go deeper.

Facebook has come a long way since its dorm-room beginnings as portrayed in the fictional hit movie, The Social Network. Along the way, the site has beefed up its messaging, added more photo and video capability, and changed the way groups work. They've also taken some hits along the way, most often for privacy concerns. The latest of these is the sites new use of face-detection to identify people in photos for tagging. We've offered tips in the past for how to protect yourself while using the social network. And we've offered tips on safe social networking in general (in the wake of a local congressman's indiscretions). We've shown you how to use Facebook Places, we've even shown you how you can get the best local deals on mobile Facebook.

This time, we wanted to simply uncover some of the lesser-known fun stuff on Facebook to enhance your interactions. We cover everything from messaging to movies, with some other nifty interface and community features along the way. Read our slideshow to find out Ten cool things you might not know how to do in Facebook. None of them are earth-shattering, but if you spend as much time on Facebook as the average person does, even a little extra knowledge can go a long way.

Get Free Credits

Facebook is moving beyond mere sharing and communication, evolving its own economic ecosystem, with Credits. Credits are virtual cash that lets users buy premium game and other app content. You can buy Facebook credits using PayPal, a credit card or mobile phone. But you can also get Credits free: On the Payments tab of your Account Setting page, click "buy more" on the Credits Balance line. Then click the small link at the bottom of the purchase choices, More Payment Options. Choose Earn credits, then Continue, and you'll see a large selection of signups and offers that will earn you from 4 to 600 credits. (That last one is for signing up for a credit card.) A new way to get free credits is by converting Bing Rewards to Facebook credits. This way you can happily play that new Pac-Man level without opening your wallet!

View Photos the Old Way

If you don't like the new black box photo view, you can simply revert to the preview Facebook photo display: Just hit your browser's refresh button or F5, and you'll be able to page through your buddy's photos in the classic view. I'm not sure this is a better way to concentrate on the images, but some prefer it.

Send Email

Okay, this one's not exactly a secret, but I'm often surprised how many people don't realize that you can use Facebook for regular email. The same dialog you use to send a private message can take an email address. And what's more, you can even snap a photo with your webcam using this dialog and include it with the email. But none of this works if you haven't set up your Facebook email account. You do this by going to your Messages page and clicking "Claim your Facebook email."

Search Smart

Facebook's search box returns a number of different types of results—users, applications, Pages, and so on. To eliminate result types you're not interested, you used to be able to prefix your query with text like "page:" but now you have to filter after hitting the magnifying glass icon—if you just hit Enter, you'll be taken to the first result in the search suggestions dropdown.

Watch Movies

Here's a new way to use your Facebook credits: Watch popular movies! The first of these available was The Dark Knight, but I found others available for watching inside Facebook: Just search on "movie" and see what pops up in the search suggestions. Hint: some hugely successful films featuring a boy warlock are ready to roll on Facebook.

Private Updates

You can choose exactly who you want to see any post, or who you don't want to see it. Before hitting the Share button, click on the lock icon to its left. From here you can change the post's visibility from Everyone, to Friends of Friends, to Friends only. Choosing Customize from here gives you far more granular options: From its dropdown box, you can choose specific people or "Only Me" (in which case it's not really a social network post). Even more useful, though is the text box below this, saying "Hide this from." This way, you can safely post about someone's surprise party, or just engage in nasty gossip, or avoid a topic that might be sensitive to certain contacts.

Secret Groups

Facebook introduced Groups with great fanfare, but as far as I can tell (unless my friends just haven't been inviting me to their groups) most people have just kept using the social network the same old way. When you create a new group (by choosing the Create Group… choice on the left panel), the default privacy level is Closed. That means only invited members can participate, but others can see that the group exists. For ultimate privacy, change this default dropdown to Secret. That way, only invited members will know ever know your group even exists.

Use Smilies in Facebook Chat

Though there's nothing to indicate that Facebook Chat can display smiles, frowns, hearts, and more when you type certain character sequences, it can. For example, type <3 in a chat window, and a lovely red heart shows up in your conversation.

Choose an Unusual Idiom

It seems that Facebook has removed the Easter eggs that used to show up after certain actions (please chime in in the comments if you find any that still work). You can, however, still choose an unusual form of English. When the Pirate option appeared, it garnered some attention. It changes, for example, "What's on your mind" to "Blabber t' yer mates." Now you can also choose Upside Down as your version of English. This upends interface text, but not your news. Just go to the bottom of your home page, click on English, and the odd choices appear in the dropdown.

Take a Poll

The Questions feature not only lets you ask all your Friends a question, but you can specify multiple choice answers. When doing this, the site will even propose answers from Facebook Pages and Groups that match your text. Keep in mind that your question is visible to all Facebook users, though you can use status update question to just ask Friends. Once the answers start rolling in, you'll see the multiple choice filled in with bar graphs showing which is winning, hovering the mouse over the answers displays the number who voted that way, and clicking on the … shows the actual users' picture and link. You can see allyour Friends' answers to polls by clicking the Questions entry on the left rail of your Home (you'll probably have to click the More down arrow).

About Our Expert

Michael Muchmore

Michael Muchmore

Contributor

My Experience

I've been testing PC and mobile software for more than 20 years, focusing on photo and video editing, operating systems, and web browsers. Prior to my current role, I covered software and apps for ExtremeTech and headed up PCMag’s enterprise software team. I’ve attended trade shows for Microsoft, Google, and Apple and written about all of them and their products.

I still get a kick out of seeing what's new in video and photo editing software, and how operating systems change over time. I was privileged to byline the cover story of the last print issue of PC Magazine, the Windows 7 review, and I’ve witnessed every Microsoft misstep and win, up to the latest Windows 11.

I’m an avid bird photographer and traveler—I’ve been to 40 countries, many with great birds! Because I’m also a classical music fan and former performer, I’ve reviewed streaming services that emphasize classical music.

Technology I Use

For everyday work, I use a good-old Dell tower with 16GB of RAM, a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 processor, and an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti GPU that runs on Windows 11. I pair it with a 4K Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-10 monitor and a Logitech MX Vertical mouse. For offsite work, I use a 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Camera-wise, I moved to mirrorless from a Canon EOS 80D with a Canon 70-300mm IS USM lens. I now have a Canon EOS R7 with a 100-400mm lens, but I miss my DSLR for several reasons.

In order of usage, the software I turn to most frequently is the Edge web browser, Slack, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365, Firefox, Brave, and WhatsApp. I use the Windows Phone link app to see everything on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra phone, which has excellent telephoto capability.

For fitness monitoring, I have a Fitbit Charge 6 and use an Anker Smart Scale P1. I’m also a streaming fan, so I subscribe to both Amazon Music Unlimited (especially for its Dolby Atmos content) and Qobuz (for its high-res sound quality and classical catalog). I recently added a Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE, which sounds surprisingly good given its low price. To holler commands instead of using a remote control, I have the Amazon Fire TV Cube in the living room, which lets me verbally tell the TV what I want to watch. It hooks up to an LG B4 OLED TV. I have a Sonos One speaker in my kitchen that also ties in with Alexa, as does the Echo Dot 2 With Clock in my bedroom. For serious listening, I have B&W 601 speakers plugged into a Conrad-Johnson Sonographe amp and preamp, with a Cambridge Audio AXN10 streamer as source. For reading, I also have a Nook GlowLight 3.

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