9 New Facebook Features you might not know about
Zuckers and the team have been keeping pretty busy of late it would seem, rolling out a whole heap of Facebook changes and – as always – failing to adequately communicate them to users. Which, if I’m honest, I’m glad about… because it gives me that job. So with the super important responsibility of keeping you lot informed, feast your brains on the new Facebook features I have covered below. There are nine of them – but I suspect the title of this article was a bit of a spoiler on that count. And – more surprisingly – most of them are pretty good (or – at least not excessively annoying/money-grabbing).
1. Emoticons invade Facebook chat
For those who are fans of the Social Skinny Facebook Page, you are SO AWESOME. Also, you probably would have already seen me post about this little change that was implemented sometime last week. Basically what it means is that we can choose from little emoticons in our chat bar. Not really that exciting – and slightly old-school – but at least they aren’t covered in advertising. Yet.
2. You can now edit your Facebook comments – at any time.
Best change ever. Now I can see how this could be annoying when others change their Facebook comments. But how good is it that you can do it? It’s pretty much the worst EVER when you realise you’ve spelt something wrong and people have already commented after you, making it impossible to correct your mistake without leaving the conversation altogether. Well, now you can fix it. You could also abuse this feature to make other people look stupid and/or crazy by changing your comments to something completely unrelated to what they then reply to you in the same thread. This could present endless opportunities. ENDLESS I tell you.
Oh and this applies to both profiles and pages. If you’ve posted comments on behalf of a page you can also edit them. Hurray!
Anyway the other thing to keep in mind is that you can also view all your edits on comments, just in case you decide to go edit crazy and change them 10-20 thousand times. Facebook will keep track and let you see all the previous versions of your comments. Because, I think we all know, we will DEFINITELY want to see these. Definitely.
3. Export your Facebook Events
I love this one. You can now export your Facebook events so that they appear on your online calendars including Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar. No more excuses that you ‘forgot’ anymore! Brilliant.
4. Reposition photos in your feed
Ok so generally speaking I think we can all agree that I am pretty much THE authority in social media. However, sometimes things happen that remind me that I may actually be human, just like all of you, and not as all-knowing as I (and you) otherwise believed. This handy little feature brought me back down to earth when I noticed it the other day. I am not entirely sure when this was introduced, and to be honest I’m too lazy to google it to find out. So I’m not entirely sure this is new per se, but I’m guessing if I wasn’t aware of it then probably most of you aren’t too. Hence its inclusion. What exactly is it? Well, I’m glad you asked. Essentially when you post photos to your page or profile you will notice Zuckers takes the liberty of sticking them in little rectangles that fit in with the Facebook Timeline format. However the bummer is that sometimes this doesn’t necessarily flatter the photos, even sometimes cutting off important sections. The good news is you can actually reposition all of them to show the most important parts. Awesome? Yep.
For example, I repositioned this particularly humourous image on my Page the other day so that you could read the most important text. Love this feature, thank you Zucks.
5. Find your nearby friends
As if Facebook wasn’t stalkerific enough, you can now use a handy feature on your Facebook mobile app (or simply by visiting http://fb.com/ffn ) that will display all your Facebook friends who are nearby. Before you start panicking and expecting your ex to start popping up ‘coincidentally’ when you’re at the shops, gym and having dinner at your folks’, Facebook will only display the people who are also logged into this particular feature at the same time. So what that means is that if you’re not looking for people nearby, no one will be able to see where you are. This is both a relief but also somewhat makes the service superfluous in my opinion. You can already find people who have checked in nearby anyway.
Although apparently you are also able to see people who are not your Facebook friends through this service as well – but to be honest I’ve never gotten it to work through either the URL or by going through my mobile app ( menu > apps > find friends > other tools > Find Friends Nearby). And secondly, since hardly anyone even knows about it at the moment I’m pretty sure even if it did work, nothing would show up. But nonetheless, that’s the news so use it or don’t as you see fit!
And thirdly, I just tried to use it on my phone again and it seems to have disappeared! Anyone who wants to share their experience of this feature please do so in the comments section below 
6. Highlight your personal posts (on your profile)
This one is a bit of a weird one. You can now pay to ‘highlight’ your own personal profile status updates or posts. All you do is click on the little ‘highlight’ hyperlink underneath your post for it to be given more exposure to your Facebook friends. Facebook doesn’t seem to have revealed the exact science of this feature nor do they appear to give you too much indication of just how much extra exposure your post will get, but hey no one is really going to use it anyway so who cares. Also, they only seem to give me the option to pay in British pounds… weird.
7. Promote your Facebook Page posts
If your page has more than 400 likes you can now get extra exposure for your posts by clicking the little ‘promote’ button under your posts. Choose what budget you’d like to spend and Facebook will let you know the estimated reach you’ll get. This will get extra exposure for your post in your fans’ newsfeeds – NOT as Facebook ads on the right-side of the page.
Oh and I did just realise that I have already written about this feature in my previous Facebook update post… so sue me. I’m a busy person, I can’t keep up with shit that I’ve written in the past. Jesus.
8. People reached metrics for Facebook Page posts
I really like this one too – Facebook has added the ability for you to see how your Facebook Page posts are tracking in terms of the number of people who have seen them (or at least been exposed to them), and also provides this number as a percentage of your total fan-base. If you hover over the data you can also see the split between organic (people who are your fans) and viral (friends of your fans who have seen the post). Pretty bloody cool me thinks.
9. Your Facebook friend count has probably jumped
This isn’t really a new ‘feature’ per se but you may have noticed recently that your Facebook friend count has inexplicably jumped. I did, because I try my hardest to keep it below 300 and then all of a sudden the world had gone mad and it was 326 and my popularity was WAY artificially inflated. I did wonder what had happened, but in typical Cara laziness I just ignored it… until I saw one of my favourite readers post an article about it – according to the lovely Jo Darby, Facebook issued this explanation:
We recently changed the way we count the number of people you are friends with to include some accounts that are not currently active on the service. It is important to note, that while we are showing different counts, no additional user information will be available. Due to our internal infrastructure we can provide an even faster experience for those that use our service by showing these modified counts.
You can go through your friend list to find these deactivated accounts and unfriend them… if you can be bothered. Which eventually I probably will, since I don’t like to have more than 300 Facebook friends (yes, it’s very anti-social of me!). Anyway if you want to read more, you can visit her article here: http://pose83.com/digital-marketing/why-have-your-facebook-friends-just-jumped-up/
So that’s about the extent of the new Facebook features recently. They are also scrapping Credits but I didn’t bother writing about that because let’s face it – no one was ever using them so who really cares.
Any other new developments I’ve missed? Be sure to rub it in that I’m a lazy, crappy social media guru (even though we know I’m still the best in the world).
Have a great week!
X
Hey! My name is Cara Pring and this is 
I would also add the following
10.”Close Friends” list, which is a pared down version of Google Plus circles, it allows you to tag your close friends and look at a feed that only contains their posts. Plus it will ensure you see all their post in your main feed.
11. “Interest lists” these allow you to create groups of Liked Pages, Friends & Subscriptions. This is a great way of collating your ever expanding network into categories like football, knitting, clients or shopping. Interest Lists can be private or made public so others can view and follow them.
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LikeDislikeGood points. I think the interest lists are a bit old now (and is anyone really using them?) but the close friends list is definitely a noteworthy addition
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LikeDislikeThanks Cara, more great tips. Love that I can edit my comments now, typo queen that I am!
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LikeDislikeGreat list, handy tips.
FYI event export is not new, I’ve been using it at least 6 months, maybe a whole year.
It is a great feature to help clean up the Facebook calendar as you can’t edit events you accept (like when a lazy musician puts their whole tour in as one event — but I’m only going to one night and don’t want to see my calendar blocked out for two weeks)!!!
So yeah, I stopped linking fbook calendar to my phone and started exporting the events to my gmail calendar, editing them to show MY involvement and linked that calendar to my phone.
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LikeDislikejestacat. HOW did you stop the linking of fbook to your phone!! OMG its driving me crazy. It invaded my phone contacts, my calendar. HELP!!! please I’m begging you lol,
Thanks
Louise
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LikeDislikeGreat article but regarding #2 on the list: “…It’s pretty much the worst EVER when you realise you’ve SPELT something wrong and people have already commented after you,…”. You may want to EDIT that sentence – spelt is a wheat, the past tense of spell is SPELLED.
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LikeDislikeHi Suzanne, thanks for the warning but I’m not American (you’ll notice my lack of ‘Zs’ in spelling as well). In Australia spelt is used interchangeably with spelled and thus correct
http://grammarist.com/spelling/spelled-spelt/
British and Australian writers apparently make no distinction between spelled and spelt, using both as past participles and past-tense forms of spell.
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LikeDislikeLet’s hear it for the Commonwealth!
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LikeDislikeHi Cara, being new to ‘the skinny’, I have to say – what a great read – awesome articles, tidy tips, riveting reading, generally really bloody useful info – Cheers for the work – only problem is I’ve now got a lot of catchup reading to do!
BTW – Re #6 do FB believe us Brits need to pay to be more popular then!?!
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LikeDislikeSalena
Hi Cara, being new to “the skinny” I must say the best article.
Keep it up
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LikeDislikeOne of the best things about Facebook is that the site keeps adding new and improved features. I’m only use Facebook occasionally and had no clue such features existed. Thanks for the post.
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LikeDislikeFacebook is TOTAL GARBAGE when it comes to finding people. I can’t even find people from my middle school or high school, when I know there name, because there is no name search box anywhere…. for you to type in the name of a person you might know. Its got to be the sorriest implemented social network on the internet.
Facebook will suggest a bunch of people by spying on your activities… and yes, some may be your friends… but to be unable to be able to find people by last name, first name, city and state… or school… is just total garbage.
I’m thinking, opportunity to make a social networking site that’s 100x better.
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LikeDislikeHey there, if you search for a name in the generic facebook search box (at top of the page) you can then click on ‘People’ and if the person isn’t there you can add filters like location and education (which includes specific schools) – in this way you should be able to find whoever you are looking for!
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LikeDislikeI wonder if you could show the possibility to track back my comments on FaceBook.
Thanks in advance.
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LikeDislikeHi there, not exactly sure what you’re asking here but have you looked at your activity log? If you click on ‘activity log’ on your profile page you can go back and see all your activity (which will include comments) – hope that helps
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LikeDislikei sent a friends request to an old friend and she accepted it!! When i go to her profile, theres still the button “Add friend”!! When i click it, it says “You are already connected”!!! I can see her updates on news feed!! But cant ilke it, when i click like, it says”‘it doesnt seem to be possible just now”!!! Wht is happening???
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LikeDislikeGreat info about the Facebook features, I came to know more about the Facebook.
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LikeDislikeI wrote something impulsive on someone’s Facebook wall & immediately blocked that person. My concern is: Will they still be able to see that comment AFTER I blocked that person?
I also deactivated my account to ensure that, in the least, WHO had posted won’t be seen.
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LikeDislikeWondering how to disable the feature on the Apple I-pod FB that shows when I last logged into my phone, on my friends FB?
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LikeDislikeIs there anyway I can track who is posting pics of my gym using the “where was this taken?” feature?
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LikeDislikeHi Marie – not sure what you mean when you say the ‘where was this taken’ feature? There’s no way to know where a photo on Facebook was taken, unless the person posting it has tagged it with a location.
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LikeDislikeoh its great really a bunch of good information.i was really missing this cool features on facebook..thanks for sharing.
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LikeDislikeThank YOU for the GREAT information. For a bit there I was able to post a pink heart by typing <3 and different smile emotions by typing
and so on when posting on FB. As of yesterday it is gone…can you tell me why or what I need to do so that I can utilize that feature again? Thank YOU!
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LikeDislikeI noticed today with events you can no longer message everyone in the event. This makes it much harder to get responses from people who maybe don’t know that they were invited, or from those that said ‘maybe’ and just need a reminder to respond and confirm, especially if there are preparation deadlines.
I would rather NOT have the calendar feature if they remove this important tool completely. They may have ‘fixed’ some of the event properties, but if you can’t message people in the event en-masse, in my opinion it is now BROKEN.
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LikeDislikeThey’ve also started a new censorship policy under the auspices of “spam control”. Specifically targeting political posts. God forbid I share something more intellectually stimulating than celebrity gossip/reality shows/sports on a basis that’s “too fast” for facebook. Yes my friends brains might explode from thinking too much.
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LikeDislikeHi Cara, given that you are the self proclaimed authority on social media my question should be easy
When a friend comments on a photo which has over 1k of comments, is it possible to be taken straight to their comment instead of having to look through hundreds of others just to see what they said?
Cheers.
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LikeDislikeHi Jack, sadly I don’t think it is. One of the many annoying things about Facebook!
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LikeDislikeCtrl F usually works. you click on the post then hit ctrl f, a search bar will pop up on the bottom and you type your friends name in. It will highlight similar names and usually will show your friends comment. It doesn’t always work, not sure why. Maybe depends on friends privacy settings.
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LikeDislikeThanks for the article! My new page account won’t link any of my friends names on status posts. This is driving me crazy! Super essential for being seen. Is there a settings modification I can do to change this that I haven’t tried yet? Desperate…
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LikeDislikeDefinitely agree with the first two points and agree with Danielle on the fact that Twitter has a lot more to do besides adding a scheduling feature to get people to choose them over third-party sites. While the scheduling feature of Hootsuite is great and has been there long before networks jumped on the bandwagon, they’ve iterated very well since they began, so their feature set goes way beyond scheduling posts, so I don’t think they have anything to worry about.
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LikeDislikeHello. We attempted to try this. However, when we completed the page promo and the promo target audience, Facebook informed us that 15.00 would not be enough to promote our post. We had to agree to run the ad continuously (we will just stop it manually now) for facebook to allow us to continue.Secondly, when we were creating the promo, we were shown that our target audience would be over 250,000 people. However, once we approved the ad, facebook informed us that the sponsored story will actually only target 20 users?! What is going on here? I am not inexperienced with social media. We have run extensive ad word campaigns and even an ad on facebook (which didn’t produce any visible results besides page likes), but never promoted a post. So far, I am not impressed.
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LikeDislikeI am attending an event that I dont want just three of my facebook friends to know about! I know of blocking them from viewing my posts, but, is there a way i can blind them to my event attendances? thank you!
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LikeDislikeHi , I really hope you can help me. My sisters boyfriend can definately see whose profiles she has been looking at??? How is he doing this?? Keeping in mind that he has her Facebook password
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LikeDislikeHe might be going through her browsing history. Even if he didn’t have her password he can still see the pages(profiles) that she accessed. She can try deleting her browser history and see whether he still can
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LikeDislikeI m not able to see the other pesrons video while cam chat
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LikeDislikeLol I like how you responded to her feeble attempt at correcting your spelling. Nicely done.
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LikeDislikeI’m receiving VERY offensive personal ‘messages’ from a couple of people who have also sent me friend requests. I successfully blocked one person but for some reason when I enter the name of the second person (EXACTLY as displayed as his FB name) he does not appear AT ALL, thus I can not block him. What to do?? I really want to block this person! Can you help?? Thanks so very much!
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LikeDislikei sent a friends request to an old friend and she accepted it!! When i go to her profile, theres still the button “Add friend”!! When i click it, it says “You are already connected”!!! I can see her updates on news feed!! But cant ilke it, when i click like, it says”‘it doesnt seem to be possible just now”!!! wht is happening???
…
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LikeDislikeasldkjfsa
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LikeDislikeThanks for sharing above help. Its really a working trick for facebook users. I have one more trick for FB users If anyone wants to hide their offline friends list from chat panel. The only thing they just need to do is, download Google chrome extiontion which takes hardly 5 minutes of your time. When I heard about this extention from my friends I thought that they were just kidding but after browsing on internet I found some trick here, http://how-to.in/how-to-enable-facebook-to-show-only-online-contacts-in-chat/ and it really works. If any of you wants to show only the friends who are online, must install this extension with the help of link provided.
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LikeDislikeHi Cara,
You seem to know a lot about fb! Thank you for your post.
Can I ask you a question?
I have a new page, and i used to promote it in fb. But I realized that no one was going to my pages trough facebook. More: Suddenly it seems that i can’t see the posts from most of my friends, but when I go to their personal pages, I can see they have recent activities. But it never shows up in the main page. Is that the reason why they can’t see my posts either?
Can you explain this?
Thanks in advance
Sami
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LikeDislikeI like this place
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