Social Little Man

 Twitter has made it deceptively easy to connect your Twitter account to your Facebook account, but don’t be fooled. It’s usually not a good idea.

Twitter and Facebook are two distinct networks with two distinct sets of etiquette and norms. Posting all of your tweets to your Facebook wall may sound like a good idea at first (I can keep my friends updated on everything going on in my life!), but believe me, neither your Facebook nor your Twitter friends will thank you.

How to do it

Before we get into the details of why it’s a bad idea to connect your Twitter to your Facebook account, here’s how to do it (for those who want to flout my advice):

As Twitter’s Help Center explains, you can post all of your tweets to your Facebook profile using an official application. You simply have to be logged in to your Twitter account and your Facebook account, and navigate to the app page: http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/. Then, just click “Allow” when asked if you want to connect your two accounts, and voila! you’re all hooked up.

After setting this up, all of your tweets will be simultaneously posted to your Facebook profile, with a little note at the bottom mentioning that it came from Twitter.

Why you shouldn’t

Now that you know how, here’s why you shouldn’t auto-tweet to your Facebook profile.

Twitter and Facebook are two very different networks. The people you’re connected to on Twitter expect different things than those you’re connected to on Facebook (even if most of them are the same group of people).

Twitter is a high-volume network, where you can tweet ten or twenty times a day and no one will say boo. Because you are encouraged to follow lots of different people – those you know and those you don’t – and because you don’t require their permission to do so, Twitter is a more informal and loosely connected network.

Facebook, on the other hand, is much more personal. You friend people who have to accept your friend request, implying some level of familiarity. The volume of updates on Facebook is much, much less than on Twitter! People expect one, maybe two status updates a day, maximum.

The culture of both networks is different, so if you combine them you risk alienating your audience. By posting your tweets to your Facebook profile, you’ll inundate your Facebook friends with status update after status update, taking over their newsfeed and appearing spammy. Those 10 tweets will fit perfectly within Twitter’s real-time home timeline, but they’ll clutter up your Facebook wall and may even result in a block or an unfriending.

The syntax of both networks is also different. Twitter relies on “#”s and “@”s to function and uses abbreviations like “RT”, while Facebook’s syntax is less niche. If your fill up your Facebook wall with status updates from Twitter like “@JustinBieber you #RockMyWorld RT @YourFriend Isn’t @JustinBieber so amazing?”, your Facebook friends will quickly become annoyed.

The exceptions

Of course, there are some exceptions to every rule.

If you don’t tweet very often (say, once or twice per day at the most, and not even every day at that), connecting Twitter to Facebook might not make much difference to your Facebook followers.

Still, the better way, in my opinion, to post a tweet to your Facebook wall is just by syncing both your Twitter account and your Facebook account to a dashboard like HootSuite, and selecting both networks for those tweets you feel also belong on Facebook. This way you can choose which Twitter messages to also post to Facebook, rather than being at the whim of an auto-updater.

Wondering how to respond to Google’s recent algorithm changes (known asPanda)? Keep reading to find out.

A bit of history

In an interview with Wired Magazine, Udi Manber, Google’s head of search, said that Google will make as many as 550 changes to its search algorithm this year. One of the bigger changes happened this past winter in what has been called the Panda or Farmer update.

According to a report by Sistrix.com, within days of the update, a number of very large websites saw their Google rankings take a drastic drop. Sites such asEzinearticles.com and Suite101.com lost 90% or more of their visibility on Google. 

This Sistrix table shows the domain and the percentage loss since Google’s change.

Although a 90% drop in visibility may seem extreme, it was a direct result of Google’s attempts to weed out content farms (websites with high-volume, low-quality content) and those trying to game the system. In the process, a number of unsuspecting websites got caught in the fray.

For the average small business owner, stories like this can be concerning. It’s hard enough to move to the top of the Google search rankings, let alone keep up with the constantly evolving magic that makes Google work.

However, for those looking to build quality websites that achieve high Google search results, nothing has really changed. As always, the key is to focus on publishing high-quality content that readers will want to share.

Here are 7 tips to help your business move to the top of the Google search rankings.

#1: It’s all about the user

It’s important to remember that the reason for the continually changing algorithms and updates is that Google has one objective—to provide the highest quality, most relevant search results possible. If they fail to do so, competitors such as Bing and Facebook are nipping at their heels ready to take up the slack.

Google is not out to penalize websites or hurt website owners. They want to ensure that users find the information they seek on the first try.

When it comes to search engine rankings and improving SEO, start by looking at the site from the perspective of the user searching Google. Does your site provide the best, most relevant information for a given search term and if not, what can you do to fix it?

Google’s Amit Singhal, head of Google’s core ranking team, provided 23 questions to consider when evaluating web content. These are some of the same questions that Google is using to test algorithms and evaluate websites using third-party beta testers. The questions provide an excellent insight into Google’s perspective and a tool to analyze your website from the user’s point of view.

#2: Content: Focus on quality over quantity

In an earlier post I wrote on how to increase your Google ranking, I talked about using blogs to increase the number of pages indexed in Google. And while it still holds true that more pages indexed for a given search term gives you a better chance of achieving a high Google rank, it isn’t enough just to publish text optimized for keywords. The quality of the content is now a factor.

Using the list of 23 questions will help you assess the quality of your content.

Since the Panda update, Google has attempted to screen out those publishing high-volume, low-quality content. Now, in the eyes of Google, it’s better to have fewer high-quality pages then lots of low-quality pages.

Blogging is still one of the best ways to move up the search engine rankings as it is a good way to add high-quality information to a website. However, web pages or blog posts offering little of value can now negatively impact a website. Removing these pages might actually help a website move up the rankings or recover from a drop in ranking.

#3: Links: Focus on quality over quantity

Incoming links have always looked good in the eyes of Google. As a result, one way to move a site up the search engine rankings was to generate a high number of incoming links all pointing to a given web page.

As Google places higher and higher value on the quality of the content, this tactic is not as effective, and can even harm a website’s ranking if overdone.

For the small business website owner, this should come as good news. Instead of generating 50 articles with subpar content, website owners can now focus on creating fewer high-quality articles or incoming links, as Google is no longer placing much value in links from article distribution sites such as Ezine.com.

In another article on ways to improve your blog SEO with inbound links, I suggested that press releases were a good way to generate incoming links because distribution services often generated back-links as articles were placed on various press release syndication websites. This link-building strategy has also changed post-Panda update, as these links are not as highly valued as they once were. However, a well-written press release can still be very effective when picked up and reported by a journalist or major publication.

Focus on getting high-quality links from high-quality websites. Guest posting is still an excellent way to generate high-quality incoming links. If possible, try to wrap links in important keywords. For example, as a content marketing copywriter, a link around “content marketing copywriter” would be more effective than a link wrapped around my name.

#4: Make the most of social media, social sharing and social search

It’s hard to tell exactly how much impact Twitter and Facebook have on Google search results, but at the very least we know that Google is providing real-time social sharing in the search results.

Google’s addition of the Google +1 button and the ability of Google users to block sites take this a step further. Although it’s still unclear how Google is using the +1 button in their algorithms, they have stated publicly that users blocking a site can have a negative impact on returns. This again demonstrates the importance of high-quality content.

If you don’t have the +1 button but want to try it out, you can enroll in Google’s experiment.

#5: Let the search engines know you’re there

Once you’ve published high-quality content, it’s important to tell Google about the content and make it easy for users to find. This means that meta titles and descriptions should closely match the content on the page.

Keyword stuffing and intentionally filling meta descriptions with keywords that don’t match the page in an attempt to deceive will only hurt your search engine results. The closer the match, the better.

It’s also important to make the most of the SERP, the short paragraph showing in the Google search returns. Use this space to provide a clear description of the content and encourage users to click through to your site.

Be sure your meta description matches the post and encourages users to click through. This is what shows in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

#6: The truth behind duplicate content

It’s not that Google penalizes websites for duplicate content; Google just doesn’t show it in the search results. Remember what I said in the beginning about providing the best possible search returns. When it comes to duplicate content, that’s all Google is doing.

Instead of showing 20 pages with the same content, Google tries to present the most relevant and original content and omit the rest. Users can still view omitted search returns, they just need to make an effort and most won’t.

This only becomes a problem if you’re using canned content or directly publishing RSS feeds from other websites. Content of this sort might be seen as low-quality and result in lower Google returns. Hopefully the days of stolen web content and RSS scrapers will soon be a thing of the past.

#7: Don’t overdo the advertising

Too much advertising can also result in lower Google rankings. This again is a result of Google’s attempts to improve search results for the user. Google tends to equate an overabundance of advertising to lower-quality or “spam” websites.

Excessive advertising can also hurt your Google returns. Note how the actual content on this site isn’t even visible above the fold. This website is also “scraping” content from Social Media Examiner which can also hurt search engine ranking.

Be sure that advertising does not interfere with the content on the page. This is especially important with advertising above the fold and within the text.

Google is constantly evolving, but the fundamentals of SEO will always remain the same. High-quality content that people want to share will always do well in the eyes of Google. Search Engine Land has put together a free guide that will help you gain traffic from search engines such as Google and Bing.

“Search Engine Land has created a Periodic Table of ‘SEO Ranking Factors.’ Notice the importance placed on content.

Facebook Places is essentially free word-of-mouth advertising for your business. When customers check in, they’ll automatically be telling their Facebook friends about it. If you run a small business with a street entrance, there’s a good chance that it’s already a part ofFacebook Places — with or without your input.

By claiming your Page, you have the opportunity to customize that free advertising. It also makes it easy to purchase pay-per-click advertising for your Places page.

Here’s how to get started.

View As Slideshow »1. Add Your Business To Facebook Places

Open the Facebook app on your mobile phone. Depending on which device you have, you’ll either hit “Places” or “Check In” on the home screen of the app. Type the name of your business in the search bar. If there’s no listing for your business, there will be an option in the search results menu to add it. You can do so by adding a description and selecting “add.”

If your business has already been added to Facebook Places, you can skip this step.

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2. Search For Your Business On Facebook

Open Facebook on your desktop and search for your business. Click on the Places result.

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3. Claim Your Place

Beneath the image on the Places page there is a hyperlink that says, “Is this your business?” If it is, you can click it to start the verification process.

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4. Verify Your Listing

Before Facebook will let you edit the page, they ask for either a business email address or a document that has your name and business’ name on it. After you supply either, it can take as long as a week for Facebook to confirm your request.

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Important Questions:

Can I merge my place with an existing Fan Page for my business? Yes. Go to your Facebook Place and click “Merge with existing Page.”

Can I unmerge my Page from Place? As of December, yes.

Can I advertise my Place the same way I advertise my Page? Yes. Click “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook” in the ad creation flow and choose your Place from the drop-down menu.

Can I target ads to people who visit my place? Not yet.

Name: Banjo

Quick Pitch: Banjo harnesses publicly-available social and local information and gives users the ability to filter that content based on their interests and location.

Genius Idea: Discover what you might be missing in the world around you.

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The marriage of the digital and physical realms is perhaps best made by way of location services that allow users to share their whereabouts and link them to venues, photos and objects.

And yet, that all-important physical link is often missed in real world scenarios when it matters most. Case in a point: An out-of-town friend posts a photo to Instagram from a place just a few miles away from you, but you never see the update, and you miss the chance to reconnect with an old friend.

Damien Patton says this very scenario was the impetus for his startup Banjo, a location-based mobile application to rule them all.

Banjo, launched Wednesday for iPhone and Android, isn’t a checkin application — although you can do that, too. Instead, it’s an aggregator of all location-based social updates and it’s designed for both social-mobile-local early adopters and newbies alike.

Banjo is intended to help you avoid missed opportunities, whether the opportunity takes the shape of a nearby friend or information shared by a nearby stranger. “Whatever it is that is going on around you,” Patton says, “it could have an impact on you in an important way.”

The application is simple to use. Fire it up and you’ll instantly see the 16 people nearest you, as sourced from numerous third-party public geo-tagged social media updates, and what they’re saying via a map or list view. Or optionally, navigate around the world to get a snapshot of what’s happening at any given place.

Banjo works whether or not you connect your own Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter or Gowalla accounts. When you connect your social accounts, the application highlights your friends and allows you to filter results for just your friends.

Patton says the mobile applications are ideal for right here, right now moments, but also useful if you wish to plan ahead. So you could, for instance, peek in on what’s happening at Disneyland, by way of status updates streaming in, and get some pre-visit information from strangers in the know.

“Whenever you open Banjo, you have an instant community, and you’re never alone,” says Patton.

Airports, he says, are already hotspots among day-one Banjo users. The assumption is that users are turning to Banjo to discover if friends happen to be just a few gates away.

Ultimately, Patton sees Banjo as a funnel for the noise coming out Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, Gowalla, Facebook and so forth. “We’re making that information digestible for people at large,” he says.

Banjo has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by BlueRun Ventures.

One of the ironies of the Internet is that, although it has the power to connect consumers across the world, it also has the potential to make local connections more intense. This is particularly true thanks to the advent of location-based services, which can make users passively aware of each other’s nearby presence (i.e., you can know what a friend is doing without making him aware that you know).

For small businesses, the appeal of such a service is obvious: There’s an opportunity both to draw in new customers and forge deeper connections with existing ones. But, despite the fact that using such services is free, the vast majority of small businesses haven’t taken advantage of location-based services. Here are five that have.

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1. DBA Barbecue — Atlanta, Georgia

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DBA Barbecue offers customers an extra reason to use their Foursquare checkin: free food or at least discounts on food. Sometimes that means boiled peanuts, other times it’s a discount on a beer or cocktail. Either way, it’s a powerful incentive. Owner Matt Coggin says that he often gets the highlighted item for free from suppliers who want the exposure, so he’s not losing any margins. Another selling point of using Foursquare, Coggin says, is visibility: Since no one likes to eat in an empty restaurant, users can see how many people are currently checked in and then decide whether to swing by.

There are other perks as well. As Coggin has previously outlined, he uses Foursquare to forge personal connections with customers. He likes to stop by customers’ tables and thank them for checking in. If he doesn’t get around to that the first time, he’ll often note their previous checkin and thank them for coming a second time.

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2. AJ Bombers — Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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Joe Sorge, owner of AJ Bombers, is such a big fan of Foursquare that he wrote a book calledFoursquareWorks. (He also wrote a book called TwitterWorks.) Sorge points out that AJ Bombers is now up to 9,000 checkins in a city that had just 400 Foursquare users last year. Sorge capitalized on the growing fanbase when he recently ran a “Swarm Badge” promotion. The idea behind a swarm badge is that if you can get 51 people to check in simultaneously, all of them get the badge. That wasn’t an issue with the Swarm Badge promotion AJ Bombers ran: 161 people checked in and unlocked the badge.

One more example? The restaurant’s Foursquare page featured a tip about the Barrie Burger — from that alone (there was no advertising), sales for the item grew 30% in the first week.

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3. Boloco — Boston

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Boloco, a burrito chain, recently took advantage of a new feature from SCVNGR called LevelUp. As explained in this video, LevelUp adds a gamification component to typical loyalty programs and also addresses the “one and done” aspect of most Groupon-like deals. In Boloco’s case, the idea worked like this: Level 1 offered $5 for $10 worth of food and drink. When the customer returned to the restaurant, they could unlock Level 2, which yielded $10 for $25 worth. Those who visited a third time got to Level 3, which provided $14 for $45.

After running the program (which is in pilot in Boston and Philadelphia right now), Boloco saw 1,396 Level 1 deals purchased. Of those, 30% bought in to Level 2 and 26% of those people went to Level 3.

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4. Monique’s Chocolates — Palo Alto, California

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A year ago, Mark West, the owner of Monique’s Chocolates, did a little experiment: He bought a half-page ad in a local magazine touting a “buy one, get one free” offer for about $350. He offered the same deal on Foursquare for free. The print ad yielded one new customer, while the Foursquare deal netted 30-plus, four or five who became repeat customers.

West says he likes the geographic nature of Foursquare, which doesn’t blast such deals at people who will likely never come by his store. He says that even Foursquare’s mayor program has worked to his advantage: “There’s now three different people who are competing to be mayor,” he says. “It’s fun.” West says he’s looking to launch a location-based loyalty program to bring things to the next level.

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5. Colibri Cuisine — Austin, Texas

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Colibri, a Mexican food truck, had no Foursquare Tips in early March and decided to do something about it. The venue started offering a free churro (with purchase) for anyone who left a tip (a note to other users, not a gratuity). Colibri now has nine tips — some from Foursquare employees who were in Austin at SXSWi — which show up prominently in Foursquare’s Explore tab. The placement has helped drive foot traffic.

Colibri also used Foursquare to lure customers in during a typically slow time of day, from 9 to 11 pm, before the late night crowd makes its way out of the bars. In the first week the special ran, the truck got seven new customers.

Keeping your Facebook info private seems to be getting harder and harder all the time, since Facebook keeps trying to make it public. To help you out, we’ve created a comprehensive guide to keeping your Facebook locked down and in your control, and we’re going to keep it updated whenever Facebook decides to add a new feature or change its privacy defaults…yet again.

Despite plenty of user complaints, Facebook still hasn’t caught on to the “opt-in” philosophy: Most of us feel that when a service adds a new feature that affects our privacy, it should ask whether we want to enable it rather than quietly enabling it for us. Facebook adds new features to their site all the time, and many of those features share information you might not want out there. Instead of regularly scouring your Facebook settings for secret new features, we’re going to constantly update this guide with all the information you need about Facebook’s newest privacy-related changes, including details for how to tweak your privacy settings to keep your information safe.

First, we’ll walk through the basic privacy settings that determine what you share, then look at a few lesser-known settings you’ll want to tweak, and finish with a few third-party tools that will help keep your Facebook information private.

The Basic Privacy Settings: What You Share

Facebook’s main Privacy Settings page has a pretty good overview of what you’ll want to change, and presents it in a way that’s mostly easy to understand. Here’s how each of the four sections work.

Connecting on Facebook

The first section of Facebook’s Privacy page is the “directory”. From here, you can control who can find you on Facebook and how. Click on the “View Settings” link under “Connecting on Facebook” to access those settings. You can make each category viewable by one of five different groups: everyone on Facebook, friends of your friends and anyone in your networks, just your friends and anyone in your networks, friends of your friends only, and just your friends.

If you don’t want everyone seeing all your information (like where you live or where you work), you should change them here. I let anyone search for me, send me friend requests, and see my friend list, but other than that I’ve left everything else as “Friends of Friends”. Chances are high that if someone’s friending me on Facebook, I know them through someone else, so it shouldn’t be hard for them to find me—everyone else I’d rather keep in the dark about who I am, where I live, and where I work.

Sharing on Facebook

This is the biggest section, which determines who can see your status updates, photos, contact information, and more. It’s pretty easy to adjust from the main Privacy page. You can set it all to “Everyone”, “Friends of Friends”, “Friends Only”, or customize your own settings. The table will provide a pretty easy-to-read overview of what your current settings are. This part’s mostly up to you, though I’ve kept most of this stuff to “Friends Only”.

You can click on the “Customize Settings” link below the table to further refine your choices. That lets you set each specific option to viewable by everyone, friends of friends, friends and your networks, Friends only, and so on. You can even set specific phone numbers of email addresses separately, which is pretty nice. In addition, you can also create custom friend lists(say, “work buddies”) that you can include or exclude from certain information.. I’d comb through this section no matter what you do, since there are some settings here that aren’t on the main table. We’ll talk more about those in the next section, “Lesser-Known Settings”.

Applications and Websites

This is where you’ll control which Facebook applications can access your profile, and what web sites outside of Facebook can access your account. Click on the Edit settings button to tweak them.

Full sizeFrankly, I think Facebook applications are awful. With the exception of certain apps (like Twitter, the iPhoto Uploader, or other legit programs I use), I try and keep this clean. Facebook applications, on the whole, are insecure, spammy, and just downright annoying. Next to the list of “Apps You Use”, hit the “Edit Settings” button to see the full list. From there, you can remove an app by cliking the “X”, or you can hit “Edit Settings” next to an app to see what information of yours it can access and what it can do. I usually draw the line at an application posting on my wall, unless it’s something I want to post to my wall (like Twitter). Again, this will vary from person to person.

The rest of this page you’ll probably want to lock down as much as possible. Under “Info accessible thorugh your friends”, you’ll want to uncheck all those boxes, so your friends’ apps can’t access your information (God knows what spammy applications they’re using). You’ll want to disable the Instant personalization feature as well, which will let sites like Pandora and Yelp use your Facebook account to give you extra “features” (also known as: spam). Lastly, unless you want your Facebook page coming up in Google results, you’ll want to turn off Public search as well.

Block Lists

Full sizeYou may think the block lists are only for ex-significant others, but there are actually some good features in there. For example, not only can you block users, but you can block app invites or event invites from specific users. So, if you have a friend that you like, but they’re one of those people that invites every ding-dong Facebook user to their event (you know, even if they don’t live in the same state), you can block event invites from them. Similarly, if you have friends that play way too many games on Facebook, you can stop them from inviting you.

To tweak these settings, just hit “Edit Your Lists” under Block Lists. To add a friend to any of those lists, just type in their name. You can also block them from the main Facebook interface. You can block a user that wrote on your wall, ignore event invites when someone invites you to an event, or block an app that someone invites you to. So you don’t always have to come back to this page to block someone.

Lesser-Known Settings You’ll Want to Tweak

Apart from the more obvious settings above, Facebook has implemented a few features that aren’t as well-known. Some are a bit privacy-invading, and need to be turned off, while others are good for your privacy but have to be turned on (nice job, Facebook). Here are the ones you’ll want to keep an eye out for.

Turn Off Facebook Places

Facebook’s Places feature allows you to “check in” to businesses and other places on a digital map, so people can see where you are. This is a huge privacy issue, and while the act of checking in is done manually (Facebook won’t automatically share your location with people), it’s still worth turning off entirely if you aren’t going to use it. You never know when a Facebook bug might surface or when you might just hit the wrong button and share your location with everyone you know.

To turn it off, just head back into your Privacy Settings and hit the “Customize Settings” link under the table. Scroll down to “Things I Share” and set “Places I check in” to “Only Me”, which will keep Facebook from sharing your location with anyone. You also might as well Disable the “Include me in ‘People Here Now’” setting while you’re at it, which is right below the “Places I check in” setting.

You’ll also definitely want to go to “Things Others Share” and disable the “Friends can check me into Places” setting, which stops your friends from sharing your location from their account. By default, this should be off for most people, but it’s probably a good idea to double-check.

Turn Off Facial Recognition

Facebook has also added a feature that scans newly uploaded photos for familiar faces. If it matches your face to one of their photos, it will prompt them to tag you in it. If you’d rather not have this feature on, you’ll need to head into your Privacy Settings and once again click the “Customize Settings” link at the bottom of the table. This time, scroll down to “Things Others Share” and disable the “Suggest Photos of Me to Friends” feature.

Turn On HTTPS to Lock Down Your Private Information

With privacy-invading apps like previously mentioned Firesheep out there, it’s more important than ever to secure yourself on web sites that have personal information on them, like Facebook. HTTPS will protect you from a lot of outside attacks, especially when you’re browsing on open Wi-Fi networks.

To enable HTTPS encryption, hit “Account” in the upper-right hand corner of any Facebook page and go to “Account Settings”. Under “Account Security”, check the box that says “Browser Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible”. Be sure to save. From then on, it will automatically connect to Facebook via HTTPS whenever possible. Note that Facebook applications still do not have HTTPS support (just one more reason not to use them).

Turn On Two-Factor Authentication to Keep Others from Logging Into Your Account

Full sizeOf course, none of this matters if someone gets a hold of your Facebook password. If you want to make sure you’re the only one logging into your account, you can enable two-factor authentication, which will send a code to your phone every time you access your account from a new computer or device. That way, if someone gets your password and tries to log in from your computer, they won’t be able to get in unless they’ve also stolen your computer (or your phone).

To enable this feature, head to your Account Settings and scroll down to Account Security. Under “Login Approvals”, check the box that says “Require me to enter a security code sent to my phone”. That way, you’ll get a notification every time a new device tries to access your account, and if it’s you, you can plug in the code to get access.

Extensions and Tools That Enhance Your Privacy Even More

These are all great, but there are a few Facebook annoyances that you can’t fix from your account settings. Thankfully, you can pick up a few browser extensions that’ll help you out. Here are some we recommend.

Facebook Disconnect

Full sizeEven if you love Facebook, it can get kind of annoying seeing that “Like” button all over the web. If you’d like to clean up the Facebook clutter on other web sites, previously mentioned Facebook Disconnect for Google Chrome will remove the Like button from most of the web sites you visit. There might still be Facebook links and icons, but it’ll remove the actual Facebook integration people build into their sites, which is usually the more obnoxious clutter.

AdBlock Plus

Full sizeA lot of sites around the net, like Pandora, Yelp, or Microsoft Docs.com, will try to connect to your open Facebook accounts and use them to “enhance” your experience. This can get really annoying, especially since it does it all automatically, without asking. We disabled some of these when we turned off the Instant Personalization Program, but bugs happen, and if you’d like to keep Facebook separate from your other online accounts, you can just download AdBlock Plus for Firefox or Chrome and add the following filters:||facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net

From then on, other sites shouldn’t be able to use your currently-logged-in Facebook account to add “features” (also known as: spam) to other online services.

F.B. Purity and Better Facebook

Full sizePreviously mentioned F.B. Purity is a userscript for most browsers that will hide annoying Facebook applications and news feed updates, like Farmville, Horoscopes, and other ridiculous spam. Previously mentionedBetter Facebook also has this ability, but it’s much more complicated. If you just want to hide the spam, go with F.B. Purity, but if you want some serious, fine-grained control over your Facebook experience (along with quite a few extra features), Better Facebook is definitely worth a look.

While they don’t boost your privacy per se, they will get rid of a lot of the annoying spam on Facebook and, in turn, keep you from accidentally clicking on something you shouldn’t. Plus, they just provide a cleaner experience.

Internet Shame Insurance

Full sizeFacebook’s privacy settings can be pretty cryptic, and while you may have gone through your privacy settings like a hawk, you can still miss things. Our own Adam Pash’s Internet Shame Insurance extension for Chrome puts Facebook privacy into plain English. Whenever you go to make a post on Facebook, it’ll tell you exactly who can see it, saving you from making any embarrassing Winer-caliber updates.

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This should help keep your Facebook a little more locked down, like it was when you first signed up for it.