It is interesting how far Facebook has come since Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launched Facebook from their Harvard dorm room in February, 2004.
The growth has been nothing short of phenomenal compared to other marketing tools we have seen come and go over the years.
Some numbers from Facebook’s press room for you to consume:
- There are more than 500 million active users, up from 400 million in February, 2010, and 300 million in September, 2009.
- 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
- The average user has 130 friends.
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
- There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (objects are pages, groups, events and community pages).
- The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events.
- The average user creates 90 pieces of content each month. More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month.
In terms of demographics, Facebook has managed to appeal to users of all ages. Â Given that, one of the challenges is creating enough interesting, effective, fun and useful content to appeal to this broad base it has attracted.
One of the most common complaints I hear is that the games are driving some users crazy. Â The updates are dominating their stream, causing them to become irritated with Facebook and some of their friends. Â You’ve seen them. Â These games are, among many others:
- FarmVille
- Frontierville
- Mafia Wars Game
- Bejeweled Blitz
- Treasure Isle
This post isn’t written to condemn games. Â If a user wants to use Facebook to play games, they should. Â They are a fun way to connect with other Friends and Users. Â If a user doesn’t want to play them, that’s fine too. Â I often tell people that if there are 100 people in the room when I speak, there are probably 100 different ways to approach Social Media, and that’s okay.
If you are one of those who would like to see the game updates vanish from your Wall without the help of Mafia Wars, the solution is simple. When you see a game update on your Wall, simply hover your cursor over the X in the upper right-hand corner of that game update.  Click on the X and the word “Remove” will appear.  Click on remove.  Don’t worry, you get another chance to choose what you’d like to remove. Options will appear. As you can see, you can:
- Hide the user
- Hide the application, or game
- Mark as spam
- Cancel
All you need to do is click on the 2nd option, which is “Hide the Application.” Â When you do that, you will no longer see any game updates from any friends who use that application. Â Your “Friend”-ship will be intact, and no one will ever know you’ve blocked the application. Â You will continue to receive all other updates they post on their Wall.
There, you’ve just become more efficient by streamlining your Wall!
Two Questions For You:
- Are there any other ways you have found to be more efficient when using Facebook or any other Social Media? If so, share them here so others will benefit.
- Do you like playing these games, or using these Applications, on Facebook? Â If so, please share with my readers why you use them.
As always, thanks for stopping by!
Thanks to Facebook Poker Chips for the wonderful Flickr photo above.
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