More on the Facebook Ticker

An awesome rundown on things you can--and cannot--do with the Facebook ticker. Hat-tip to this article: Social Media Examiner

Probably the most controversial change is the addition of the News Feed Ticker. Some people hate it; others love it. But the one thing you can’t do is easily hide it. Although there are some workarounds.

The News Feed Ticker shows all the comments, posts, likes, friendships and events of all of your friends, pages and subscriptions.

The Ticker contains posts and “activity stories” (such as friends commenting on other posts, liking pages, RSVPing to events, etc.) but now the “recent stories” area contains only posts (which can include status updates, pictures, links and videos) by friends, pages, subscriptions and stories posted by apps (such as YouTube or Networked Blogs).

The Ticker is very real-time and shows who is doing what on Facebook right now. By clicking on the down arrow in the upper-right corner of a post, you can have more control over what you see from that person or the app that posted the story.

Click the down arrow in the upper-right corner to adjust the settings for posts.

The “activity stories” are what appear in the Ticker, so if you don’t want to see every move made by a person, you can unsubscribe to their activity stories. You’ll still get updates when that person posts something in their status bar. You can also decide if you don’t want to see updates from a certain type of application as shown in the picture above.

Something interesting about the Ticker is that previous posts by pages and friends may have a longer life than they did before. When someone comments or replies to a previous post, the story of that comment shows up in the Ticker and you can then click on the story to see the whole post again as shown in the figure below.

Posts have a longer life due to follow-up comments.

One benefit of the Ticker is if you have friends who are also connected to your fan page, and you see that they’ve replied to your fan page post in the Ticker, you can reply as your page right from the Ticker. But only if you have your Posting Preferences set to “Always Comment as your Page.” Find this setting in the Edit Page area of your Facebook page, and then select “Your Settings.”

Reply as your page right from the Ticker.

Adjusting the Facebook Ticker/Chat Window On The Right

Here is a very popular question that came around during the last round of Facebook updates:

How can I turn off the Facebook ticker and chat window on the right side of my Facebook window?

Awesome question, and you have several options with that pane.  Or, as some have been known to call it, that pain.

The ticker is that spot in the upper right that keeps showing you new updates.I personally did not care for the ticker.  This reminded me far too much of the Bloomberg business channel and always grabbed my attention because it kept moving.  (Had Facebook added something shiny to that area, I would have been doomed.  Shiny and moving both and I would never have looked away.)

You can adjust the divider between the ticker and your chat friends.  Simply hover your mouse over the horizontal divider that separates your ticket and your friends.  Your mouse will become a two-headed arrow pointing up and down.  Once you see that double-arrow, click on the divider and slide it up or down.  I prefer up, so I can maximize the friends and minimize the ticker.

Or, you can hide that right side area altogether.  Do do that, just look at the far bottom of the sidebar and click the small icon which represents an arrow pointing to a door.  That will hide the entire sidebar, and potentially give you a little more space to work with.

To get the chat box back, look to the left side of your Facebook home page.  You should see a grouping of your friends that are on chat, and just above that you will see the text Friends on Chat.  Click the small icon to the right (highlighted in yellow below) to restore your ticker/chat sidebar on the right.

You'll feel like a pro when you start tuning your own Facebook page.  Pretty fun stuff.  Now go try it.