Could You Have Facebook Private Messages That You’ve Never Seen?

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!