how does the chat bar work on facebook

If you have logged in to Facebook today you will notice that the old chat window is gone and in its place is a new sidebar. The chat window was a small application from which you used to chat with all your friends and could be collapsible. It works the same as the old window but with a few changes. In the new sidebar you are also able to see the friends you most interact with using messages etc. With the sidebar you can quickly message friends and if a friend is not available to chat you can type in their name and send them a message.

When you send a message through the chat window, two things happen, they are sent a message and as soon as they login to Facebook there is already a chat window open with your message. There is no way they are going to miss your message. This new bar is being rolled out to everyone and there are a few changes to your chat list, you are unable to see your old chat lists since Facebook populates your sidebar dynamically, however to limit visibility you can still use your lists found at the bottom of the window. Found below is what Facebook has to say about the new rollout. 

So how does the chat bar work on Facebook. 


How do I use the sidebar for messaging?
The sidebar lets you quickly contact some of the friends you message most. Just clicking on a friend’s name opens a chat window. If your friend isn’t available to chat, you can still send messages for them to read later. 

How do I message a friend who doesn’t appear in the sidebar?
To message someone who isn’t listed in your sidebar, just type your friend’s name in the search box at the bottom of the list. Clicking on a friend’s name opens a chat window. If your friend isn’t available to chat, you can still send messages for them to read later. 

How do I hide the sidebar?
To collapse the sidebar, select Hide Sidebar from the actions menu in the bottom right corner of the sidebar.

Which friends appear in the sidebar? Can I add specific friends?
The list of friends in your sidebar is based on who you’ve interacted with most frequently or recently on Facebook. Since it updates dynamically, you can’t manually add friends to the list.

The list shows both friends who are available to chat and friends who aren’t. Clicking on a friend’s name opens a chat window. If your friend isn’t available to chat, you can still send messages for them to read later.

How do I message a friend who doesn’t appear in the sidebar?
To message someone who isn’t listed in your sidebar, just type your friend’s name in the search box at the bottom of the list. Clicking on a friend’s name opens a chat window. If your friend isn’t available to chat, you can still send messages for them to read later. 

Where are my chat friend lists?
Since the list of friends in your sidebar now updates dynamically based on who you interact with, it is no longer organized by friend list. You can still use friend lists to limit your availability to certain friends.

How you know a friend is available to chat:

Friends with a green dot next to their names are available to chat
Friends with a gray moon next to their names are available but inactive
Friends with no icon next to their names are unavailable

BandPage the #1 music App on Facebook

BandPage  by Root Music on Facebook now has almost 30 million fans and growing. It is by far the most popular music app on Facebook. So what is BandPage and how does it work. Well for starters fans can login to the App and listen to their favorite music, check out photos, watch videos and buy merchandise. Fans can also look for upcoming shows and share music with friends. Once a track is share on Facebook it can be played straight from the FB Wall or News Feed. 


So how does it work if you are a musician.


You need to go to their FB page and login using the BandPage App using your FB login, you can also login to Rootmusic.com. Once logged in you would already need to have a FB page for your music or your band and that page can be converted into a BandPage. This BandPage will show up on your Facebook profile and your fans can then share your music from there and spread the word across the network. People can share and buy your music right from your Bandpage. 


If you want to find your favorite musician's BandPage simply head over to their profile page on Facebook and a growing number of them have a Bandpage on their profile already. 


RootMusic.com the company that runs and operates BandPage describes it's service like this.



What is BandPage?
Finally Facebook has a home for music! Yup, Seriously. Fans can listen to your music, check out your upcoming shows, photos, follow your Twitter, write on your wall, and read your bio. Upload all your songs to the SoundCloud music player, and Facebook Connect automatically pulls in your photos, bio, band name and more. You can also upload a custom banner and add custom colors. Add a hyperlink to your banner, make your tracks like to listen/download and start building up a mailing list with BandPage Basic. After you’ve uploaded all your content, your fans can explore your music and share it with their friends, who can share it with their friends, spreading the word about your music across the globe.


 BandPage has spots to post show listings and music samples,  and the paid version (which costs $2 a month) adds more customizations, videos, and fan engagement features like "sign up for our mailing list and receive a free download."


BandPage allows bands to create custom Facebook pages. 

An original post by

Sociolatte

Facebook Video Calling use it now

Facebook has announced their latest feature 'Video Calling', you can now talk to all your Facebook friends from around the world right from Facebook. Facebook have announced this new feature saying that they have tied-up with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. The feature will be available in 70 languages and is slowly being rolled out to all 750 million + Fb users. This announcement comes close on the heals of the same feature being offered by Google's newest social project Google+. The competition is now heating up and Facebook have lost no time in launching the feature. It will be rolled out to all users over the coming weeks but if you do no have it as yet and can't really wait, click here to get started. Bring your conversations to life on Facebook. With face-to-face video calling, now you can watch your friends smile, wink and LOL. If your friend is not available you can also leave a video message. There is no software to download and works fine with any browser.  

An original post by

Sociolatte

How to leave a Facebook group

Maybe you are one of those people who do not mind your friends adding you to random groups. A a result you get added to many groups and some of them are groups you do not want to actually belong to. In addition you keep getting notifications and post from it's members and it can get quiet annoying. In the old Facebook design it was very easy to leave the group. it still is easy but this post is to help you find the link to leave or quiet a group easily. Many of these groups are also visible on your homepage.

How to quiet or leave a Facebook group

1. Log into Facebook
2. Click on the name of the group you wish to leave
3. You are taken to the groups homepage
4. On the right hand side tool bar just below the members photos are three options
5. The third one is "Leave Group"
6. Click that link
7. You will be asked if you really want to leave the group
8. If you sure you want to leave, simply click leave group
9. Your done

Please be sure to leave comments

An original post by

Sociolatte

How to cancel a friend request you sent on Facebook

This is just a quick short post on how to cancel a friend request you sent on Facebook. There could be many reasons why this is done. Maybe you sent a request but the person has not accepted it for some time. You also know that it's not going to happen. The easiest thing to do is to simply cancel it and end the wait. Now the question to be asked is will the person know that the friend request was cancelled. There should be a message that the request was cancelled when they click on the friends icon.

So how do you cancel a friend request on Facebook

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on the profile of the person you sent a friend request to
3. Hover over the 'Friend request sent' button
4. From the dropdown menu click on "Cancel friend request" link
5. The 'Friend request sent' button should now change to 'Add Friend'
5. Your done

If you have any further information related to this please use the comment box found below. 

An original post by

Sociolatte

How to keep your Facebook account secure

Facebook has a number of security settings you can use to help keep your FB account secure. Especially if you access Facebook on shared or public computers, when travelling or using unsecured wireless networks. There is also the feature that allows you to access Facebook with a secure connection. You can activate https to ensure that your FB usage is encrypted and cannot be intercepted by unauthorized third parties. This really helps users who access Facebook from coffee shops etc.


There is also the feature of login notifications. This means that if you primarily use FB on the same computer and mobile phone you can get a notification when your account is accessed from a new device. So if someone accesses your account from an unauthorized device you can quickly reset your password and take other necessary steps to secure your account. There is also the feature of sessions, what this does is shows you your recent activity and when you account is being used. So if you have last logged in from a friends computer and forgot to logout, you can see your recent activity and quickly logout.


There is also a new feature called onetime password that you can choose to activate if you are going to be accessing you account from a public computer.


To set your advanced security features on Facebook


1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on Account
3. Click on Account Settings
4. Click on Account Security


You can now choose the features you would like enabled.


Please go through the video below to know more.

An original post by

Sociolatte

Read your Facebook news feed like a newspaper

PostPost is your Facebook newspaper, what this little App does is allows you to login using FB and then pulls all your wall content shared by your friends and you and arranges it for you to read like a newspaper. See what your friends want you to read. Once everything has been arranged you can still use the like and comment button and not have to leave the page at all. Kind of interesting to read you wall posts like this. Anyways your wall is called a news feed and it is fitting to read it like a news paper. The application also arranges everything very well and you do feel as though you are reading a real newspaper, especially the way stories, pics and videos are arranged. It also helps bring clarity to your news feed and you can see what is most happening among all your friends.


Check it out now.

An original post by

Sociolatte

How to control who can send you friend invites on Facebook

If you are one of those people who do not want any and everyone to send you invites. FB has a provision for you. The idea is that you allow only friends of friends to invite you. The idea is that for a person to invite you they would already need to be associated with a friend of yours. This way you control who can contact you. So, a perfect stranger will be unable to send you an invite. There are many people who need this and the reasons are varied. Maybe they look like some celebrity or have the same name. maybe a pretty face and the reasons go on and on and there are many people that just seem to get get too many invites from perfect strangers. The best way to control this is to allow only friends of friends to invite you. You may however loose on the old friend who will find it all the more difficult to add you as a friend.

To allow only friends of friends to invite you.

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on Account
3. Click on privacy settings
4. Click on view settings under choose your privacy settings.

5. Beside " Send you friend requests" click the drop down box

6. Choose "Friends of Friends"

7. Your done.

An original post by

Sociolatte

How to become popular on Facebook via your updates

FB's data team put together a lot of information and have come out with charts and info on how to become popular on the site. There are a lot of explanations given on what makes some users popular, has to do with updates of course. To analyze a person's status updates popularity about 1 million updates were pulled and analyzed. All updates were from US English speaking users. They started with a correlation between age and popularity. Younger people tend to have more negativity and older users updates were longer and also used more presuppositions and articles. Timing was also looked at the data team found that there seemed to be more positive updates in the morning. Well, comes as no surprise.


Here comes the important part, your popularity depends on what your friends like. If a user updates his status with something that is liked by friends, then there are more likes on that status and bring in more readers, since friends of friends will also read the update. " Birds of a feather flock together", becomes very true as people reading things they generally like seem to follow others with same interests. 


So whenever you write a status update it is no longer about you. It becomes more about your friends and what they like. The more "Likes" and comments your status gets the more popular you will eventually become.The more the work "I" and "first person pronouns" are used the more comments the update gets. Negative emotions also tend to get a lot of comments. Comments related to religion and sleeping attract fewer comments.


[Source: FB Data]

An original post by

Sociolatte