I just opened my ‘Other’ Facebook inbox today. Did you know it was there? I swear I’ve never even noticed it. Here’s the deal…
When one of your Facebook “Friends” sends you a private message (not a comment on your timeline), a red notice shows up on the little talk bubbles above your cover image letting you know you’ve got a new message.
To read your private message, you click on the bubble and it opens your inbox showing your your new messages. For all this time, my eyes apparently went directly to the picture of my message-sender and the message itself. I’d read the message, respond, then close messages. My eyes never went to that ‘Other’ box.
This extra inbox is where Facebook funnels any messages sent to you by people other than your ‘Friends’. I found a message in my Other box giving me details about my upcoming class reunion. There was also a very sweet message from an old friend who by now must think I’m a world-class bitch for not responding to him for two months!
Facebook’s explanation of this ‘Other’ inbox: “…all other messages will go into an Other folder where you can look at them separately”. Whaaat? Oh…they mean they’ve arranged it so that these ‘Other’ messages don’t get randomly mixed in with my ‘Friends’ private messages similar to how Facebook mixes their ‘Suggested Apps’ in with my newsfeed???!! Gotcha. (Does that annoy anyone else?)
It seems really weird to me that you have to look for this secret squirrel inbox and that Facebook doesn’t send you a notification when a new message arrives in this folder.
I’m certainly not here to trash Facebook. It’s solely because of good ‘ol Mark Zuckerberg, that I’ve been able to reconnect with old friends and make lots of new ones, but some of the changes, or lack thereof sometimes really has me scratching my head. But…since I wasn’t smart enough to mastermind this huge social media playground, and considering that I’m able to use it every day for free, I’ll just keep blindly updating my status, sharing great blog posts, and continue searching for tips and tricks that teach me fixes and provide explanations for the gazillion things that drive me crazy about Facebook.
What things would you like to learn about Facebook? Anything that makes you crazy? Let me know, and I’ll find an answer for you!
I’m just fascinated with those little icons that you see in people’s statuses on Facebook. I just learned how to do the heart symbol, using <3 (Facebook turns it into a pink ❤) and I’m trying really hard not to overuse it, but it’s so cool (go ahead, call me lame – it’s the little things in life). Some of you may have been doing this for years because it’s been around awhile, but there’s those of us who are a little slow on the draw.
Just a couple of keystrokes can produce a cute little symbol. So how do you make that happen? Easy, peasy. ♪~ ♫~♫ ♪~ ♪~ ♪~ ♪~ ♪~ ♫♫ ~♪
Look at your keyboard. Somewhere around your space bar is the Alt key. Hold down the Alt key and simultaneously type in numbers on your number keypad (to the right of your character keys – you won’t get symbols if you use the horizontal numbers across the top of your keyboard). To get a single music note, for instance, you hold down Alt and type 13 which gives you ♪. Alt plus 14 gives you ♫. Click HERE for the complete list of symbols and their corresponding Alt numbers.
Another way to insert symbols and characters into your Facebook status is to just copy and paste. I found the coolest website, fsymbols, that has a ton of characters, icons, and even text art, like this * ♥`•.¸¸.•´´•:*´¨`*:•.••.¸¸. ´´¯`•♥ that you just copy and paste. Click around their website. It took me awhile to figure out how to copy the symbols (like I said before, I’m a little slow sometimes). When you find a symbol you want to copy, double click on it first to highlight it. Then right click, and copy, then go to your Facebook status and right click then paste. Annoy the hell out of your friends by posting messages like this…
“I just ❤ listening to ♫ ♭ ♮♬. I think all ♂ do. Since it’s ☂ today, I’m going to grab some ☕ and ✍ more ✉’s. Afterall, I am a ♋, and you know how much we ♡ having ⌚ alone. I don’t think I’ll even answer my ☏. If the ☁s go away and the ☼ comes out, I’ll go get my hair ✂ . Until then, ☮ out!”
If you don’t want to get all cray cray copying and pasting your own icons, Facebook has jumped on the icon train and just added mood status icons that you can choose when you update your status. Have you tried those yet?
I know, right? As if we don’t already waste enough time on social media and can afford to spend hours playing on Facebook. If you want to do some serious playing, let me share some really cool adult coloring pages I found (oops, damn ADD kicking in). You can find them HERE on our Pinterest page. Speaking of Pinterest, are you following us? Are we following you? Leave your pinterest URL, ie: http://pinterest.com/oconline/ in the comment below. We follow back everyone who follows us!
Have fun! (>‿◠)✌
