Hide Games From Your Facebook Timeline

One of Facebook’s most polarizing features is the wide variety of time-killing applications. If you’ve visited the site lately, you’ve doubtless seen a number of items in your News Feed updating you on your friends’ progress in Farmville, Mafia Wars, and many others.

Did you know it’s easy to remove these updates from your timeline, without disconnecting from your friends? Just find one of these posts and click the “Hide” link that appears on the right when you mouse over it.

Facebook will then ask you if you want to hide the person or the application. Click the name of the game.

Success! You’ll now no longer see updates on the games your friends are playing on Facebook, and you’ll see more links, photos and status updates instead.

Update: It gets even better. (Thanks to techpp.com) Not only can you keep games and other apps out of your Live Feed, you can also exclude them from your Notifications. When a notification appears in the lower right of your screen, mouse over the upper right corner of the item to see the “X” appear. Click that, and you’ll be invited to hide all notifications from that application.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Applications, Farmville, Mafia Wars, Tips, Tutorial, Web 2.0

Family Ties Draw Older Generations into Social Networking

In a recent study by research firm Anderson Analytics, social network participants from age 13 to over 65 were polled on their reasons for joining social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.

All groups had a significant number of participants who considered social networks “fun” and declared an interest in connecting with friends. However, a more pronounced difference between the generations was evident when it came to using these tools to connect with family members.

Just 27% of Generation Z (13-14 year-olds) saw family connections as a draw, where 51% of the over-65 group said keeping in touch with family was one of their reasons for joining.

Invitations also play a stronger role in the older age groups. 46% of Baby Boomers and 60% of the over-65 group said they joined because an invitation had been sent to them by someone they knew. Invitations played a much smaller role (under 30%) for users under 30.

Tags: Baby Boomers, Demographics, Facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0, WWII Generation