Opinion: The 7 Least Used Facebook Features

Facebook constantly updates their social network to include and remove features, a case in point being their recent removal of ~~application spam~~ Facebook notifications. We’re all familiar with the changes that actually made a difference – the news feed, the redesign, the “like” button – but we thought it’d be interesting to look at those lesser-known features in Facebook… you know, the ones that people probably never use.

Pokes

I used to get at least 10 pokes a day. Now I get about one a week. You may be thinking that this could be a result of my slow decline in popularity, and you definitely could be right. But it’s also important to note that pokes are barely used by anybody I know as well. When Facebook did their redesign, they took Pokes out of the spotlight, and pokes now appear in a small box way down the right side of the page. Combine that with the number of big, popular applications and big flashy news feeds, and it looks like pokes are about to go the way of the dodo.
newsfeedmod

Boxes

When the Facebook redesign kicked off, one of the biggest changes was that applications, which once used to house their ‘boxes’ on a user’s main page, were kicked off into their own tab labeled “Boxes”. This is a mandatory tab, where applications’ profile boxes appear. A box is something that can contain a user’s top score in a game, or their latest activity, or just a cool photo from a photography application. Unfortunately, in the entire history of the new redesign, I have never found myself interested in looking at my or anyone else’s box at all. The idea is sound, but the end result is a cacophony of random images and information that really doesn’t convey a clear image of a person’s application habits or application scores.
tabsboxes

Tabs

Tabs in general were an exciting idea when they were released, but somehow haven’t gained the traction that many thought they would. Their prominent position on people’s pages means that you’d think that they’d have more use than they do, but other than flipping to the “photos” tab, I don’t see much use of them. Specifically, applications have the ability to create custom tabs for their game, which seems like a great idea, but hasn’t been executed yet in a way that users seem to embrace. I had anticipated that game makers like Playfish would attempt to make a “Playfish tab” which would have a summary of users’ successes in all their games, but with recent moves like the “games dashboard”, it seems like Facebook will summarize the games themselves and users would be even less to use the Playfish tab.

Notes

Notes, while not ever particularly used, enjoyed a brief resurgence with the recent “25 Random Things About Me” phenomena, where users would post notes talking about their own random personal traits. The idea caught on in Facebook and spread everywhere until people got tired of them and I realized that two-thirds of my friends think “I Love Lost” constitutes a ‘random thing”. With the end of the fad, so ended the use of notes. I have yet to see a single note since the trend, and in fact Facebook’s “comments” system and expanded wall means that even extended tirades can be posted within the regular Facebook wall and comment system.

Application Wall Post Attachments

If you look at the ‘share box’ at the top of any wall, you can see the arrow that allows you to post special attachments along with your post. The defaults are photo, video, calendar entry and URL. These are definitely coming into use, but application wall post attachments are not. Any application, such as SuperPoke, can be attached through the special area, but there are a series of steps to go through before you can attach pokes to your wall post. I don’t see this catching on any time soon.

Recent News

We all got a new interface with the redesign, and the news feed was one of the biggest changes. What we don’t see is that the default sorting method for our news feed is the “top news” method. There is another method called “most recent”, where you’re able to view all the news feed items of all your friends in chronological order. Wait, isn’t that what top news is? The answer is no: top news uses Facebook’s social algorithms to determine news that will likely be relevant to you, based on various factors which likely include who you communicate with on Facebook.

Friends Lists

Friends lists are interesting because they seemed as if they would be the perfect response to the masses of uesrs that complain about their news feed being unusable. By adding friends to a list and setting it as your default, you can filter out the news feed entries from people you’re not interested in. That said, the interface to actually add and remove friends from a list can be a bit clunky, and somehow the feature hasn’t caught on amongst most users. People I talk to often complain that their Facebook news feed has gotten so irrelevant to them that they barely use it and will probably quit altogether, and when I inform them about friends lists the response is usually “Wow, I had no idea that existed.”

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1225747 Comments2010-03-15+20%3A41%3A06Neil+Vidyarthi »

Interesting post, but do you have any stats to back up the assertion that these are the "least used features"? As far as I can tell, Facebook doesn't release data that tells us how many people have added Wall Boxes, custom tabs, etc.

Comment by Jenn Lynch — March 15, 2010 @ 11:46 am
Definitely not, this is based on anecdotal evidence from friends and isn't meant to be a statistical analysis. Would love to get that data from Facebook though and see how close I was!

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 15, 2010 @ 11:48 am
Facebook still sucks. hate that site so much

Comment by Dankoozy — March 15, 2010 @ 11:51 am
I actually disagree with a few. I do see some Notes still hanging on, but not as much, you are right. Pokes are used just to be playful, and not for Facebook's intended purpose. Friends list I have but many others don't.

But most importantly, a good portion of users I know do use the Most recent tab instead of Top News.

Comment by George Tinari — March 15, 2010 @ 11:53 am
The "Most Recent" feed is least used? I disagree. In fact, I see many questions from people asking how they can STAY on the Most Recent feed when Facebook switches their default back to Top News.

This is why I added exactly that feature to my "Better Facebook" browser script (Firefox/Chrome):
http://BetterFacebook.net

One of its many features is that it will detect that you are no longer on Most Recent, and switch you over automatically.

Comment by Matt Kruse — March 15, 2010 @ 11:55 am
I see a lot of notes useage, and I disagree about tabs as well. I often flip to the "info" tabs to get a summary of a person, as well as photo tabs and custom made tabs like video. And I always use "most recent" to override the so-called "top news." Facebook has never gotten right what I find most interesting in the feed.

Comment by Ally — March 15, 2010 @ 11:58 am
Interesting points, and yes I didn't realize people knew about the 'most recent' area.

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 15, 2010 @ 12:19 pm
Great post Neil

I can completely agree with six of your choices but the last one, Friend List. This one has a lot of power behind it, not just letting you organize all your friends but taking back some control of what they can see.

The way I try to look at my Friends Lists is more of a tiered structure for the distribution of my personal information. Facebook being a great way to stay in touch and share my information with seldom seen friends, I don't always like the feeling of all my activities being published for the world to see. Nor do I feel most would care.

Setting specific privacy settings for certain lists helps control this. In one way I can present some information to the entire world and future employers but at the same time not feel like I need to hold back or change content for the friends I'm closer with.

As for the other six, their time is slowly passing and again great post.

Comment by Chase — March 15, 2010 @ 12:21 pm
These are not the "least used" features – these are the "most under-rated" features.

Comment by Facebook User — March 15, 2010 @ 1:54 pm
How is "Recent news" the useless one, if you just go by "Top News" you get maybe 5 posts a day and miss anything else that's going on.

Comment by Johnn — March 15, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
I agree with Matt. I ONLY use the Recent News feed, and I think most other people do as well. I hate missing something and I like to see all the updates my friends make.

Comment by Liam — March 15, 2010 @ 3:10 pm
Interesting. Are you saying that you think these are all really useful?

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 15, 2010 @ 5:08 pm
When boxes tab and app tab were made, everyone knew that is recycle bin before removing apps from profiles.

Most recent should be shown as another filter in left.

Most notably, pokes and others' wall posting has declined. fb needs to fix this.

Comment by new fb — March 15, 2010 @ 8:08 pm
Nope, don't agree with 80% of those!

Comment by Sam Smith — March 16, 2010 @ 12:38 am
I disagree with the last 2; I use lists pretty often, and, like other have said in the comments, I prefer the 'Recent News' view. There is also a URL you can use to access it directly, I have it bookmarked. Read about it here: http://exde601e.blogspot.com/2009/11/direct-acces...

About App wall post attachments: is there a way to change their order? I have some apps that pushed themselves first, but I only use links, and they are now hidden under the 'more' arrow.

Comment by Facebook User — March 16, 2010 @ 2:22 am
Yeah, I disagree with these too. In fact, a few of those features I use the MOST on Facebook – and know that others do too. Wouldn't this post be more appropriate on a personal blog site?

Comment by Liam — March 16, 2010 @ 3:48 am
Thanks, Eldon. As a new facebook user, this is very helpful. I have two burning questions: What a POKE is and why would I use it? Also, where is the help menu on facebook when I have questions like that?

Comment by Delia Horwitz — March 16, 2010 @ 3:58 am
And, is there a users real time q and a support feature?

Comment by Delia Horwitz — March 16, 2010 @ 3:59 am
I use the "Recent News" all the time, and it annoys me that it periodically defaults to "top news," and that you can't get recent news in any way that makes sense from your phone.

How did you determine that this feature is not very used? Is it because you don't use it much? My experience is that all my friends asked "what happened to my news feed" and found it pretty quickly.

What's insidious about "Top News" is that once FB decides what you want to see, that's what you see, so you can't change its idea of what you see unless you force the view to "Recent News" and give it more info about what you like to interact with.

Even more interestingly, there are certain settings (like unblocking an application after you've blocked it) that you can only set while in the "Recent News" view. Strange, but true.

Comment by Amy — March 16, 2010 @ 4:09 am
I think I disagree with most of these – other than 'Poke' which I find annoying.

Boxes, notes and attachments are all features that I use repeatedly on a daily basis. As an admin of multiple pages – these are all relevant – they also receive plenty of traction.

Comment by Crystal Gibson — March 16, 2010 @ 4:28 am
Interesting. I never use the "top news" sorting feature – ALWAYS use the Recent news.

Use Friendslist a lot as it also groups the friends on the chat list (which is aggregated on to my IM through XMPP).

Never used Poke og Notes, but I use tabs sometimes.

Comment by Kim Schulz — March 16, 2010 @ 5:04 am
There's a lot of interesting opinions about which features they use, really appreciate the feedback. I wrote this because I wanted to express that I felt that there were a lot of Facebook features that just weren't on my or any of my colleagues' radars, and the post was intended to be an opinion piece (that's why I made a note to put "opinion" in the title). Thanks for reading and let's hope Facebook puts out some stats one day on what features people actually ARE using.

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 16, 2010 @ 5:43 am
I refuse to believe "notes" serve little purpose now the wall has been expanded.

For my work, notes are pretty much standard for sending out updates. You can give each a title and text, add, format and credit images, then publish in a way that can be shared by others.

We use RSS to publish news to the stream, make the occasional status update to remind people what's happening – but everything else is by way of notes. Rather successful too.

The OTHER good things about notes are that they can be drafted in advance (try doing that with a wall post) and published when required with very little effort. That and the fact that they can be edited after publishing, shared onto multiple fan pages by way of linking to the note, and still give the readers chance to like and comment them makes them pretty unbeatable.

Comment by Mike '?addy&#03 — March 16, 2010 @ 5:49 am
- I check them both but I use Most Recent as my default. I miss the Groups news feed, it's gone and it's a pity.

- Many of my friends use Notes.

- I don't know how to use the application wall posts attachments anymore, it used to be very easy to attach something to a message or a wall but now I cannot find most of my apps.

- Sometimes I use the Tabs and friends lists. Boxes? every now and then, but I often use the Boxes that are shown on my profile page.

- Pokes? I don't like them, never did.

Comment by User — March 16, 2010 @ 7:05 am
I use the most recent news every time I log into Facebook. In addition, I use notes as a place to share my writing with others. To have those two features removed would take away a lot for me on Facebook.

Comment by Angie Mangino — March 16, 2010 @ 8:39 am
I would actually like to see an expanded Tab set (at least 2 more tabs and an easier way to re-order/prioritize tabs), especially on fan/business pages for FBML tabs.

I think Poke is stupid and I don't use Notes as often now than I used to (typically, I use the NetworkedBlogs application to port my blog posts into FB which replaces Notes – at least for me).

Not much of a Boxes user but I do have a couple set up.

I don't like the 20 limit on Friends lists because I have groups that are larger than that.

I like to see Recent News, not Top News (Don't like FB telling me what I should think is important news to know. I'd rather see it all in that case).

Comment by MIke — March 16, 2010 @ 8:48 am
"Notes" are used quite a bit by my "friends" network on FB. As well, whenever I post an article to my personal site, it gets pulled into my feed as a Note.

Comment by Raj Dash — March 16, 2010 @ 12:51 pm
I disagree with the “wall post attachments”. I think most application have not implemented it, or missed the quiet breaking API change late last year. The someecards app sees on average 600 unique users per day use it.

That said, the app attachment option isn’t available for some users, which means Facebook suppresses it or selectively displays it. ???

Comment by Brent Baisley — March 16, 2010 @ 12:21 pm
I have to disagree with “Pokes”. They are most definitely still a vibrant component of the Facebook eco-system for some hardcore Facebookers. I’m personally not a hardcore Facebooker, but I did lose my P-card (poke card) recently to a wonderful social media vixen, and owe that entirely Facebook’s dedication to providing the web’s top poking functionality.

Comment by TJ — March 16, 2010 @ 12:24 pm
My default view of the feed is "Most recent" actually, and I thought that noone is using the "Top News" one… also, if there weren't any friend lists i'd never be online in chat… other than that, completely agree

Comment by Nikola Šobaji — March 16, 2010 @ 3:18 pm
I use most recent…

AND i use friend lists to sort out my chat buddies.

useful stuff

though never used pokes too much

Comment by Zafarali Ahmed — March 17, 2010 @ 4:47 am
You're right about pokes and boxes, but wrong about Notes. Using RSS, Notes are how people syndicate their blog content onto their Facebook pages. In fact, shy of sharing every single new entry individually, Notes is the only feature allowing you to share your RSS feed on Facebook. Many individuals and companies use Notes specifically to share blog feeds.

Comment by Mike Doyle — March 17, 2010 @ 3:35 pm
Add me to the list of people who prefers "Most Recent" over "Top News". I want to see everything in chronological order, and I'll decide if there are people on my friends list that I need to cut out of the feed. I also use the notes and friends lists, though probably not up to their potential. I don't use the pokes or application wall post attachments, though. And I rarely use the boxes tab, though I do use the wall, info and photo tabs on a regular basis.

Comment by Beth — March 18, 2010 @ 9:58 am
i have to say i think the least used and useful feature that most don't grasp is their own privacy settings. i see so many people simply deleting people that they don't want to see certain things…all you have to do is use the tools already there at your disposal.

Comment by c — March 19, 2010 @ 6:52 am
I agree with everything you said except the last two:

1) I ALWAYS change my feed to "Most Recent" – "Top News" is practically useless to me. I want to see what is going on NOW. I don't want Facebook telling me what they THINK is important to me.

2) I use friend lists all the time. It helps later when I am trying to do something or send something to only certain people. Another cool use is when I am recommending friend to new users – usually I know them for the same reason they know me.

Pokes are definitely history… If I was in middle-school, maybe…

Good article.

Comment by Bryan Pollard — March 19, 2010 @ 6:58 am
I use all these almost every day, with the exception of pokes

Comment by Facebook User — March 19, 2010 @ 7:00 am
the live need motivation i think,not only to share news,and say hello,for me the wall like it's mine and have the privacy,for hobby and favorit,news,and friendly,because like the cure for psychological mentality treatment,and i can make the litle laboratory with my meditation

Comment by Andre Isakandar — March 19, 2010 @ 7:05 am
First time I completely disagree with you

Besides Pokes I use the other options a lot

Is this article a personal opinion or you conducted a Survey ?

Comment by McSee — March 19, 2010 @ 7:52 am
I usw friends lists to sort friends from family etc, but more important to sort information I receive from certain groups I belong to. My son has medical problems so I have groups sorted into a medical list so I can filter it out from the rest of my friends lists to get crucial information I need.

As for recent and top news, I don't see why they just don't have the news set up as it happens, that's how all my friends want it to be.

Notes I use occasionally and would hate if they took it off.

Comment by Sandy — March 19, 2010 @ 8:41 am
I’m surprises so many are unaware of Friends lists. Not only are these useful to group news items by for clearer feeds, but I think essential for maintaining an effective privacy polocy. I might put my ‘friends’ into several user lists, but each person exists also in one ‘security’ list that allows me to breakdown what people can see from my profile, from ‘Restricted’ to ‘Family’ to ‘Professional’ to ‘Social’

Comment by Steven Jones — March 19, 2010 @ 9:35 am
I also use “Most recent” and Friend Lists.

I notice I can add Pages to my various Lists, but I can’t add Groups to my Lists.

Is there a way to add Groups to Lists that I’m not aware of?

Comment by Fred Goodwin — March 19, 2010 @ 11:08 am
As far as I’m concerned, and most if not all of my friends seem to share this opinion, Top News is a totally useless feature and would not be missed if it were dropped. In the meantime, I wish there were some way to make Most Recent the default setting.

Comment by Edward Franchuk — March 19, 2010 @ 1:28 pm
Lists are great for communicating only with friends with specific affiliations and interests, as Chase said. I have about 10 lists, and almost all my friends are in two, some in as many as four. The 20-member limit is a significant drawback. Another drawback is that if a friend is in more than one list, the most restrictive privacy setting for all lists that friend is in applies to that friend under all circumstances. It's very backwards. Fixing that is on my wish list.

Comment by Mary-Ev Anderson — March 19, 2010 @ 7:04 pm
Hmm- I respectfully disagree with several of your statements.

1. Notes- I know a lot of people that post Notes. Usually when they want to share a story or post political thoughts. Because the note stays when the Wall comments scroll away, the Notes are still valid. I posted a Note after going to the inauguration last year, and people are still occasionally sending the link on to friends and then I get more comments. Other friends post Notes about their families or travels, etc. So, maybe your friends don't use it. Mine do.

2. Friends Filter- with the most recent redesign, FB doesn't let you set a default view for your newsfeed anymore. I have always used filters and set up groups for viewing newsfeed, and have shown many friends how. The workaround I came up with was to go through all their steps to get to my preferred group for the default view, and then bookmark it. Now, I do not use the Home link, but my bookmark to get to the newsfeed. Works beautifully.

Comment by Deede — March 20, 2010 @ 5:00 pm
only Boxes excepted, the others I’m using almost every day. Seems like this issue not so true

Comment by Ha Nguyen — March 21, 2010 @ 2:35 am
Most Recent is probably the most used, I wish there is an option to keep Most Recent on default.

Comment by Abdel — March 22, 2010 @ 9:53 am
The friends lists are the most used feature for me, but I am a bit disgruntled that with the most recent "facelift" from FB, I seem unable to organize the order of the lists. I used to be able to drag and drop, but there seems to be no way to order the friends lists. I like to keep the most frequently used ones at the top.

Comment by Susan L. Prince — March 23, 2010 @ 3:22 pm

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Interesting post, but do you have any stats to back up the assertion that these are the "least used features"? As far as I can tell, Facebook doesn't release data that tells us how many people have added Wall Boxes, custom tabs, etc.

Comment by Jenn Lynch — March 15, 2010 @ 11:46 am

Definitely not, this is based on anecdotal evidence from friends and isn't meant to be a statistical analysis. Would love to get that data from Facebook though and see how close I was!

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 15, 2010 @ 11:48 am

Facebook still sucks. hate that site so much

Comment by Dankoozy — March 15, 2010 @ 11:51 am

I actually disagree with a few. I do see some Notes still hanging on, but not as much, you are right. Pokes are used just to be playful, and not for Facebook's intended purpose. Friends list I have but many others don't.

But most importantly, a good portion of users I know do use the Most recent tab instead of Top News.

Comment by George Tinari — March 15, 2010 @ 11:53 am

The "Most Recent" feed is least used? I disagree. In fact, I see many questions from people asking how they can STAY on the Most Recent feed when Facebook switches their default back to Top News.

This is why I added exactly that feature to my "Better Facebook" browser script (Firefox/Chrome):
http://BetterFacebook.net

One of its many features is that it will detect that you are no longer on Most Recent, and switch you over automatically.

Comment by Matt Kruse — March 15, 2010 @ 11:55 am

I see a lot of notes useage, and I disagree about tabs as well. I often flip to the "info" tabs to get a summary of a person, as well as photo tabs and custom made tabs like video. And I always use "most recent" to override the so-called "top news." Facebook has never gotten right what I find most interesting in the feed.

Comment by Ally — March 15, 2010 @ 11:58 am

Interesting points, and yes I didn't realize people knew about the 'most recent' area.

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 15, 2010 @ 12:19 pm

Great post Neil

I can completely agree with six of your choices but the last one, Friend List. This one has a lot of power behind it, not just letting you organize all your friends but taking back some control of what they can see.

The way I try to look at my Friends Lists is more of a tiered structure for the distribution of my personal information. Facebook being a great way to stay in touch and share my information with seldom seen friends, I don't always like the feeling of all my activities being published for the world to see. Nor do I feel most would care.

Setting specific privacy settings for certain lists helps control this. In one way I can present some information to the entire world and future employers but at the same time not feel like I need to hold back or change content for the friends I'm closer with.

As for the other six, their time is slowly passing and again great post.

Comment by Chase — March 15, 2010 @ 12:21 pm

These are not the "least used" features – these are the "most under-rated" features.

Comment by Facebook User — March 15, 2010 @ 1:54 pm

How is "Recent news" the useless one, if you just go by "Top News" you get maybe 5 posts a day and miss anything else that's going on.

Comment by Johnn — March 15, 2010 @ 2:35 pm

I agree with Matt. I ONLY use the Recent News feed, and I think most other people do as well. I hate missing something and I like to see all the updates my friends make.

Comment by Liam — March 15, 2010 @ 3:10 pm

Interesting. Are you saying that you think these are all really useful?

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 15, 2010 @ 5:08 pm

When boxes tab and app tab were made, everyone knew that is recycle bin before removing apps from profiles.

Most recent should be shown as another filter in left.

Most notably, pokes and others' wall posting has declined. fb needs to fix this.

Comment by new fb — March 15, 2010 @ 8:08 pm

Nope, don't agree with 80% of those!

Comment by Sam Smith — March 16, 2010 @ 12:38 am

I disagree with the last 2; I use lists pretty often, and, like other have said in the comments, I prefer the 'Recent News' view. There is also a URL you can use to access it directly, I have it bookmarked. Read about it here: http://exde601e.blogspot.com/2009/11/direct-acces...

About App wall post attachments: is there a way to change their order? I have some apps that pushed themselves first, but I only use links, and they are now hidden under the 'more' arrow.

Comment by Facebook User — March 16, 2010 @ 2:22 am

Yeah, I disagree with these too. In fact, a few of those features I use the MOST on Facebook – and know that others do too. Wouldn't this post be more appropriate on a personal blog site?

Comment by Liam — March 16, 2010 @ 3:48 am

Thanks, Eldon. As a new facebook user, this is very helpful. I have two burning questions: What a POKE is and why would I use it? Also, where is the help menu on facebook when I have questions like that?

Comment by Delia Horwitz — March 16, 2010 @ 3:58 am

And, is there a users real time q and a support feature?

Comment by Delia Horwitz — March 16, 2010 @ 3:59 am

I use the "Recent News" all the time, and it annoys me that it periodically defaults to "top news," and that you can't get recent news in any way that makes sense from your phone.

How did you determine that this feature is not very used? Is it because you don't use it much? My experience is that all my friends asked "what happened to my news feed" and found it pretty quickly.

What's insidious about "Top News" is that once FB decides what you want to see, that's what you see, so you can't change its idea of what you see unless you force the view to "Recent News" and give it more info about what you like to interact with.

Even more interestingly, there are certain settings (like unblocking an application after you've blocked it) that you can only set while in the "Recent News" view. Strange, but true.

Comment by Amy — March 16, 2010 @ 4:09 am

I think I disagree with most of these – other than 'Poke' which I find annoying.

Boxes, notes and attachments are all features that I use repeatedly on a daily basis. As an admin of multiple pages – these are all relevant – they also receive plenty of traction.

Comment by Crystal Gibson — March 16, 2010 @ 4:28 am

Interesting. I never use the "top news" sorting feature – ALWAYS use the Recent news.

Use Friendslist a lot as it also groups the friends on the chat list (which is aggregated on to my IM through XMPP).

Never used Poke og Notes, but I use tabs sometimes.

Comment by Kim Schulz — March 16, 2010 @ 5:04 am

There's a lot of interesting opinions about which features they use, really appreciate the feedback. I wrote this because I wanted to express that I felt that there were a lot of Facebook features that just weren't on my or any of my colleagues' radars, and the post was intended to be an opinion piece (that's why I made a note to put "opinion" in the title). Thanks for reading and let's hope Facebook puts out some stats one day on what features people actually ARE using.

Comment by Neil Vidyarthi — March 16, 2010 @ 5:43 am

I refuse to believe "notes" serve little purpose now the wall has been expanded.

For my work, notes are pretty much standard for sending out updates. You can give each a title and text, add, format and credit images, then publish in a way that can be shared by others.

We use RSS to publish news to the stream, make the occasional status update to remind people what's happening – but everything else is by way of notes. Rather successful too.

The OTHER good things about notes are that they can be drafted in advance (try doing that with a wall post) and published when required with very little effort. That and the fact that they can be edited after publishing, shared onto multiple fan pages by way of linking to the note, and still give the readers chance to like and comment them makes them pretty unbeatable.

Comment by Mike '?addy&#03 — March 16, 2010 @ 5:49 am

- I check them both but I use Most Recent as my default. I miss the Groups news feed, it's gone and it's a pity.

- Many of my friends use Notes.

- I don't know how to use the application wall posts attachments anymore, it used to be very easy to attach something to a message or a wall but now I cannot find most of my apps.

- Sometimes I use the Tabs and friends lists. Boxes? every now and then, but I often use the Boxes that are shown on my profile page.

- Pokes? I don't like them, never did.

Comment by User — March 16, 2010 @ 7:05 am

I use the most recent news every time I log into Facebook. In addition, I use notes as a place to share my writing with others. To have those two features removed would take away a lot for me on Facebook.

Comment by Angie Mangino — March 16, 2010 @ 8:39 am

I would actually like to see an expanded Tab set (at least 2 more tabs and an easier way to re-order/prioritize tabs), especially on fan/business pages for FBML tabs.

I think Poke is stupid and I don't use Notes as often now than I used to (typically, I use the NetworkedBlogs application to port my blog posts into FB which replaces Notes – at least for me).

Not much of a Boxes user but I do have a couple set up.

I don't like the 20 limit on Friends lists because I have groups that are larger than that.

I like to see Recent News, not Top News (Don't like FB telling me what I should think is important news to know. I'd rather see it all in that case).

Comment by MIke — March 16, 2010 @ 8:48 am

"Notes" are used quite a bit by my "friends" network on FB. As well, whenever I post an article to my personal site, it gets pulled into my feed as a Note.

Comment by Raj Dash — March 16, 2010 @ 12:51 pm

I disagree with the “wall post attachments”. I think most application have not implemented it, or missed the quiet breaking API change late last year. The someecards app sees on average 600 unique users per day use it.

That said, the app attachment option isn’t available for some users, which means Facebook suppresses it or selectively displays it. ???

Comment by Brent Baisley — March 16, 2010 @ 12:21 pm

I have to disagree with “Pokes”. They are most definitely still a vibrant component of the Facebook eco-system for some hardcore Facebookers. I’m personally not a hardcore Facebooker, but I did lose my P-card (poke card) recently to a wonderful social media vixen, and owe that entirely Facebook’s dedication to providing the web’s top poking functionality.

Comment by TJ — March 16, 2010 @ 12:24 pm

My default view of the feed is "Most recent" actually, and I thought that noone is using the "Top News" one… also, if there weren't any friend lists i'd never be online in chat… other than that, completely agree

Comment by Nikola Šobaji — March 16, 2010 @ 3:18 pm

I use most recent…

AND i use friend lists to sort out my chat buddies.

useful stuff

though never used pokes too much

Comment by Zafarali Ahmed — March 17, 2010 @ 4:47 am

You're right about pokes and boxes, but wrong about Notes. Using RSS, Notes are how people syndicate their blog content onto their Facebook pages. In fact, shy of sharing every single new entry individually, Notes is the only feature allowing you to share your RSS feed on Facebook. Many individuals and companies use Notes specifically to share blog feeds.

Comment by Mike Doyle — March 17, 2010 @ 3:35 pm

Add me to the list of people who prefers "Most Recent" over "Top News". I want to see everything in chronological order, and I'll decide if there are people on my friends list that I need to cut out of the feed. I also use the notes and friends lists, though probably not up to their potential. I don't use the pokes or application wall post attachments, though. And I rarely use the boxes tab, though I do use the wall, info and photo tabs on a regular basis.

Comment by Beth — March 18, 2010 @ 9:58 am

i have to say i think the least used and useful feature that most don't grasp is their own privacy settings. i see so many people simply deleting people that they don't want to see certain things…all you have to do is use the tools already there at your disposal.

Comment by c — March 19, 2010 @ 6:52 am

I agree with everything you said except the last two:

1) I ALWAYS change my feed to "Most Recent" – "Top News" is practically useless to me. I want to see what is going on NOW. I don't want Facebook telling me what they THINK is important to me.

2) I use friend lists all the time. It helps later when I am trying to do something or send something to only certain people. Another cool use is when I am recommending friend to new users – usually I know them for the same reason they know me.

Pokes are definitely history… If I was in middle-school, maybe…

Good article.

Comment by Bryan Pollard — March 19, 2010 @ 6:58 am

I use all these almost every day, with the exception of pokes

Comment by Facebook User — March 19, 2010 @ 7:00 am

the live need motivation i think,not only to share news,and say hello,for me the wall like it's mine and have the privacy,for hobby and favorit,news,and friendly,because like the cure for psychological mentality treatment,and i can make the litle laboratory with my meditation

Comment by Andre Isakandar — March 19, 2010 @ 7:05 am

First time I completely disagree with you

Besides Pokes I use the other options a lot

Is this article a personal opinion or you conducted a Survey ?

Comment by McSee — March 19, 2010 @ 7:52 am

I usw friends lists to sort friends from family etc, but more important to sort information I receive from certain groups I belong to. My son has medical problems so I have groups sorted into a medical list so I can filter it out from the rest of my friends lists to get crucial information I need.

As for recent and top news, I don't see why they just don't have the news set up as it happens, that's how all my friends want it to be.

Notes I use occasionally and would hate if they took it off.

Comment by Sandy — March 19, 2010 @ 8:41 am

I’m surprises so many are unaware of Friends lists. Not only are these useful to group news items by for clearer feeds, but I think essential for maintaining an effective privacy polocy. I might put my ‘friends’ into several user lists, but each person exists also in one ‘security’ list that allows me to breakdown what people can see from my profile, from ‘Restricted’ to ‘Family’ to ‘Professional’ to ‘Social’

Comment by Steven Jones — March 19, 2010 @ 9:35 am

I also use “Most recent” and Friend Lists.

I notice I can add Pages to my various Lists, but I can’t add Groups to my Lists.

Is there a way to add Groups to Lists that I’m not aware of?

Comment by Fred Goodwin — March 19, 2010 @ 11:08 am

As far as I’m concerned, and most if not all of my friends seem to share this opinion, Top News is a totally useless feature and would not be missed if it were dropped. In the meantime, I wish there were some way to make Most Recent the default setting.

Comment by Edward Franchuk — March 19, 2010 @ 1:28 pm

Lists are great for communicating only with friends with specific affiliations and interests, as Chase said. I have about 10 lists, and almost all my friends are in two, some in as many as four. The 20-member limit is a significant drawback. Another drawback is that if a friend is in more than one list, the most restrictive privacy setting for all lists that friend is in applies to that friend under all circumstances. It's very backwards. Fixing that is on my wish list.

Comment by Mary-Ev Anderson — March 19, 2010 @ 7:04 pm

Hmm- I respectfully disagree with several of your statements.

1. Notes- I know a lot of people that post Notes. Usually when they want to share a story or post political thoughts. Because the note stays when the Wall comments scroll away, the Notes are still valid. I posted a Note after going to the inauguration last year, and people are still occasionally sending the link on to friends and then I get more comments. Other friends post Notes about their families or travels, etc. So, maybe your friends don't use it. Mine do.

2. Friends Filter- with the most recent redesign, FB doesn't let you set a default view for your newsfeed anymore. I have always used filters and set up groups for viewing newsfeed, and have shown many friends how. The workaround I came up with was to go through all their steps to get to my preferred group for the default view, and then bookmark it. Now, I do not use the Home link, but my bookmark to get to the newsfeed. Works beautifully.

Comment by Deede — March 20, 2010 @ 5:00 pm

only Boxes excepted, the others I’m using almost every day. Seems like this issue not so true

Comment by Ha Nguyen — March 21, 2010 @ 2:35 am

Most Recent is probably the most used, I wish there is an option to keep Most Recent on default.

Comment by Abdel — March 22, 2010 @ 9:53 am

The friends lists are the most used feature for me, but I am a bit disgruntled that with the most recent "facelift" from FB, I seem unable to organize the order of the lists. I used to be able to drag and drop, but there seems to be no way to order the friends lists. I like to keep the most frequently used ones at the top.

Comment by Susan L. Prince — March 23, 2010 @ 3:22 pm

Opinion: The 7 Least Used Facebook Features

Pokes

Boxes

Tabs

Notes

Application Wall Post Attachments

Recent News

Friends Lists

Recommended Articles

Inside Social Apps 2012 is Less Than Two Weeks Away

1225747 Comments2010-03-15+20%3A41%3A06Neil+Vidyarthi »

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Opinion: The 7 Least Used Facebook Features

Pokes

Boxes

Tabs

Notes

Application Wall Post Attachments

Recent News

Friends Lists

Recommended Articles

Inside Social Apps 2012 is Less Than Two Weeks Away

1225747 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2Fthe-7-least-used-facebook-features-2010-03Opinion%3A+The+7+Least+Used+Facebook+Features2010-03-15+20%3A41%3A06Neil+Vidyarthihttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.allfacebook.com%2F%3Fp%3D12257 »

Leave a comment

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Send us a Tip

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Let your next job find you!

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Digital Strategist

Digital/Social Media Manager - Entertainment

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1225747 Comments2010-03-15+20%3A41%3A06Neil+Vidyarthi »