How to Improve Your Facebook User Experience… When Facebook Won’t Do It for You

Almost as satisfying as sticking your tongue out at Facebook

I’ve been bitching about the Facebook user experience for a while now, and things just seems to be getting worse. Maybe it’s the Law of Attraction: the more you focus on something, the bigger it gets.

Now Facebook has rolled out a new mailbox feature that is so flawed it will require its own blog post. In the meantime though, I want to share with you an incredible tool that’s almost as satisfying as sticking your tongue out at Facebook – and a lot more effective.

I wrote about Facebook’s usability issues some time ago. The main issue with Facebook is the enormous amount of garbage and uninteresting information that rolls through the stream on your home page. It shows everything from who joined which group, to who friended whom, and who scored how much in what networking game.

But I don’t want to know that stuff. All I really want to know is what my friends are saying or posting. I want to see their status updates, the links they want to share, and the videos they recommend. I don’t want to know how their farm is doing.

Facebook home stream shows everything from who joined which group, to who friended whom, and who scored how much in what networking game

So when Facebook added a filter to the top of the stream page, I was a very happy social networker… until I saw it in action. It lets you show only status updates or only photos, or only links, from everybody or a certain group. That should be great. But it isn’t.

I don’t need to show only one thing at a time and I don’t want to have to filter to see it. I want to choose what I see and what I don’t see! If I don’t want to see who befriended whom, I should be able to simply check a box and hide that information.

I don’t need to show only one thing at a time and I don’t want to have to filter to see it

The Solution: F.B. Purify Plugin

So after my last post regarding the most annoying Facebook behaviors, a few readers suggested I try  www.fbpurity.com. It doesn’t fix all Facebook’s usability disasters, but it does make the experience A LOT nicer!

FB Purity is a browser plugin that seamlessly cleans up your Facebook interface. You can install it on Firefox,  Google Chrome,  Safari and  Opera but not on Internet Explorer —another good reason to abandon this horrible browser!

Once installed, just open Facebook and… hey presto! You’ve got a clean stream. Even the ads on the right are gone! No more ads for “serious adult singles” for me.

And it’s easy to roll back. If you happen to miss all that garbage information or if you’re worried someone might have beaten your Mafia score, you can always click “show” to display those posts. If you still want to see which groups your friends join, that’s not a problem.

It’s easy to roll back. Just click on the "show" links, to see what you're missing

Clicking the F.B. Purity link allows you to control exactly which information to show and which to hide: a real dream come true! Your stream – your control!

Clicking the F.B. Purity link allows you to control exactly which information to show and which to hide

I highly recommend that you install this plugin today, and start enjoying some relief from all that Facebook noise and clutter. Live long a clutter-free Facebook stream!

That still leaves the question though of why this feature isn’t part of Facebook. Why do we need to install a plugin to control our pages.

Have you tried FB Purity? What do you think about it? What would you want to add to it?