- Emoticons are representations of facial expressions, created through a combination of keyboard characters. If you type certain emoticons into Facebook chat, they will be automatically transformed into the corresponding animated emoticon. For example, a yellow smiley face can be created by typing one of the following combinations:
:-) or :] or =)
Some other emoticons supported by Facebook include smiley faces gasping, winking, frowning or sticking out their tongues. You can also create devils, hearts, sharks, robots and penguins. - Others can see when you are online through Facebook Chat. You probably already know that you can adjust your settings so that you appear offline to everyone, but what you might not know is that you can pick and choose who gets to see when you're online. To do this, simply open Facebook Chat and click on "Friends List"; create a new list called "BlockList" and begin adding everyone who you don't want seeing your online status to that list. Then, click on the little green icon beside the list and click on "Go Offline." Now everyone on the list will think you are offline while the rest of your friends will see your online status.
- If you have many Facebook friends but don't care to have all of their status updates in your News Feed, you can delete individual people from your news feed without them knowing and while still remaining their friends. To do this, hover your mouse over a status update in your News Feed to reveal a small "x" in the top right corner. When you click on the "x," a drop-down menu will appear with several options. Click on "Hide all by (friend's name here)." If in the future you want to reverse this action, just click on "Most Recent" at the top of your News Feed page and then click on "Edit Options." You "hidden list" will appear with everyone you've hidden on your news feed. To remove someone from the hidden list, click on the small "x" beside the person's name.
- Confuse your friends by making all of the text on your Facebook Profile appear upside down. To do this, click on the link that states your current language setting in the lower, left corner of your Profile page. Then in the pop-up box, click on the downward-facing arrow beside "English" to reveal a drop-down menu with all of your options. Click on "English (Upside Down)" and you are done. Alternatively, you can click on "English (Pirate)" to change the wording on your profile to pirate phrases. For example, your "Messages" will become your "Bottle o' messages" and your "Friends" will become "Me Hearties."