Friend Limit Reached – Culling and Managing your Facebook Friends & Pages

Friend Limit Reached.

I knew it was coming one day soon, but today was the first time I received this message while trying to ‘become a fan’ of a page "Sorry, you cannot add any more friends or fan more pages without removing some first.

Damnit. I really want to be a fan of this guy.

Become a Fan option removed – until I can rid of some Friends!

I thought that Facebook had a limit of 5,000 Friends but that it wouldn’t affect pages I wanted to be a fan of.

Guess I was wrong in that assumption.

Time to Cull.

Friends & Fan Pages – Culled..

No time to waste, I’ve got a million things I need to do, but I know I need to cull some friends and fan pages, so I chose to remove:

1. Friends with no photo, unless they were located in a custom-list.
ie: if they are a drupal programmer, or similar, and didn’t have a photo, I left them as a friend because I want to be friends with them and I understand why programmers don’t upload their photos ;)

2. Photos that were: "Business Logos, Flowers, Microsoft Clip-Art, Products, and US Dollars"

3. People who were still listed as "Friend Request Pending"
(I had at some stage requested to be their friend, but they must of clicked on ignore)

4. Groups/Fan pages that I haven’t visited in over a year

5. People who never introduced themselves via a message in their Friend Request or email/wall post, and have not had any contact with me since adding me – so I have no idea who they are (maybe just people wanting to build their list, or maybe they just hadn’t had any reason to make contact yet)

6. Photos of near-naked people who, to me, look like people who just want to use it to find a relationship or to spam their product.

How I organise Facebook Friends

I create lists for my main interests, clients, geographic locations, businesses, etc, and I also have lists by Year/Month.

The list spans all the way from A to Z.. but you get the idea from the image above.

How I choose what Lists to add new Friends to

Every person that I add on Facebook gets added to the "Year/Month", as well as another group if they have the same ‘interest’.

If I met them via the 30 Day Challenge, then they would go into my "A – 2010-Mar" list and also into "- Thirty Day Challenge"

If they indicate that they met me on Twitter, they would go into my "A – 2010-Mar" list and also into my "Twitter" list, etc)

If they are Australian, I’ll add them to my Australia list, and also my "A – 2010-Mar" list. One day I may also sort by state, but my business is global, it doesn’t particularly matter to me, but it’s something that you might want to think about if your business is local.

If I have no idea at all who they are, then they just go into the Year/Month list.

I haven’t always been this organised, so many are only listed under one list, but ever since I realized the benefits, I’ve become very strict with myself to do it right :)

Benefit of Organizing # 1 – Finding People & News

The real benefit is being able to find people that share your interest quickly, and find news that interests ‘you’ much easier.

Also, if you have a joint-venture coming up about a certain subject, are marketing to a particular niche, or have a local event coming up – you already have a list of people categorized that might be interested.

Benefit of Organizing # 2 – Fan Page / Group Requests

Only inviting people who are Arabic and have interest in Studying in Australia to my "Arabic Speakers – Study in Australia" fan page.

… People who are into Wordpress, to my I love Wordpress Plugins fan page.

… People who are into "The Secret" to my "I love The Secret" group.

… People who are an "SGR Affiliate" to my "Leverage The Secret" group.

And for my "WebWooky" Fan page – to not annoy people with requests over and over again – basically, at the end of each month, I invite my new friends from the previous month to become a fan of my WebWooky Fan page (my main fan page).

Benefit of Organizing # 3 – Maintenance

Not a big benefit when you are just starting out on Facebook, but when you are starting to reach your 5,000 Friend limit, having your lists organized is a huge time-saver. I can make sure I never remove someone that I personally requested to add, see how long they have been a friend and if it’s over a year and I still don’t recognise who they are, then most likely we’ve never had any contact and I am safe to remove them.

Removed just over 400 friends today, and I hope that my pre-organizing will mean that noone will get offended because they will only be people who either never had any contact with me anyway, use it only for mlm/affiliate/spam marketing (so they wouldn’t notice me gone anyway) or doesn’t use Facebook much (people who still haven’t uploaded a real photo).

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As well it enables you to authenticate to the blog in order to make personalized comments and gain access to the download/member areas.

Through the single Socialize API, your site can make use of the APIs enabled by several social networks. You can publish actions on the Facebook Newsfeed and enable your visitors to share articles through the Facebook notification system. On your own website, you can also display MySpace or Facebook friends along with permit your visitors to share data together. Gigya Socialize is built to protect users’ privacy whilst giving website creators all the details and control they require to make their blogs sociable.

The Gigya Socialize plugin aggregates authentication and social APIs from Facebook Connect, MySpace ID, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and AOL, offering websites to be able to:

• Securely Authenticating users to your blog via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter along with other OpenID providers
• Increase visitor activity on social networks by allowing users to invite friends to share articles
• Comments to Facebook Profile Feed
• Giving visitors the ability to invite their friends from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more to your blog’s community
• Improve website traffic by sending visitor status updates and newsfeed events to social networks
• Allows visitors to send content to their friends
• Allows visitors to update their status on whichever social network they used to connect to you with

The plug-in is scalable and secure – applying standard authentication techniques to be able to prevent account spoofing and it is fully scalable. The plugin code is also GPL licensed.

Download it from Wordpress.org | Read more at Gigya.com

Once you’ve uploaded and activated the plugin, you need to go to the Gigya website and register a new account. Then, to use all the features, you need to setup API’s for each of the social networks, or, if you aren’t in a hurry or not technically able to do it, they will do it for you (in about 5 days). I setup 2 of them and then realized my time is more valuable and filled out the damn form:) I am still working on configuring everything, but I see Gigya as the "way of the future" for blogs, helping both the site owner and especially the visitors. Any plugins that help your visitors have a better experience and also allow your content to be spread further and wider, is a definite plus plus plus :)

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Filipino, Philippines “Dancing Inmates” from Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC), a maximum security prison, were treated to a visit by Michael Jacksons long-time choreographer Travis Payne and dancers Daniel Celebre and Dres Reid to learn performances from THIS IS IT.

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Donate Now @ https://hopeforhaitinow.org/

Then Tweet about it, using hashtag #igave to encourage others to donate.

Follow the Global Conversation with the Hope for Haiti Now Tweet Map

So far:

1. Alicia Keys "Prelude to a Kiss" [Watch on YouTube]
2. Alicia Keys "New York", [Watch on YouTube]
3. Coldplay "A Message live in London" [Watch on YouTube]
4. Bruce Springsteen "We Shall Overcome" [Watch on YouTube]
5. Stevie Wonder "A Time to Love" & "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" [Watch on YouTube]
6. Shakira "I’ll Stand By You" [Watch on YouTube]
7. John Legend "Motherless Child" [Watch on YouTube]
8. Mary J Blige "Hard Times Come Again No More" [Watch on YouTube]
9. Taylor Swift "Breathless" [Watch on YouTube]
10. Christina Aguilera "Lift me Up"  [Watch on YouTube]
11. Sting "Driven to Tears" [Watch on YouTube]
12. Beyoncé & Chris Martin "Haiti – I can see your Halo"  [Watch on YouTube]
13. Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock, and Keith Urban "Lean on Me" [Watch on YouTube]
14. Madonna "Like a Prayer"  [Watch on YouTube]
15. Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris "Halelujah"  [Watch on YouTube]
16. Jennifer Hudson "Let It Be"  [Watch on YouTube]
17. Haitian artist Emeline Michel "Many Rivers to Cross" [Watch on YouTube]
18. Neil Young & Dave Matthews "Alone and Forsaken" [Watch on YouTube]
19. Wyclef Jean "Rivers of Babylon" [Watch on YouTube]
20. Bono, The Edge, Jay-Z, Rihanna [Watch on YouTube]

This is a playlist of "All" ‘Hope for Haiti Now’ Telethon Appeal Performances on YouTube:

Direct Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/happyches#grid/user/D34CB4E64D503116

 Beyoncé & Chris Martin "Haiti – I can see your Halo" [Watch on YouTube]

Madonna – Like a Prayer [Watch on YouTube]

Jennifer Hudson "Let It Be" [Watch on YouTube]

Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris "Halelujah" [Watch on YouTube]

Stevie Wonder "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" [Watch on YouTube]

Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock, and Keith Urban "Lean on Me" [Watch on YouTube]

Shakira "I’ll Stand By You" [Watch on YouTube]

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It’s called HourGuard and it’s put out by an Australian company who give it away for free (their intention is that you will install their other products at the same time and love them so much that you will pay for them).

If you are charging your customers for specific tasks that you do and want to show them how much time each specific task took, it’s brilliant.

• Start and stop timing with the push of a button
• Create your own easy to follow task structures by breaking your projects down into sub-tasks.
• Create manual timesheet entries for those times you are not at your computer.
• Manage your tasks effectively by marking them as active (default), complete or closed.
• Generate easy to read activity reports.
• Save, print or email reports for billing purposes.
• Runs in the background without interfering with your normal day to day tasks.
• Easy to use interface makes timing your tasks a breeze.
• Completely free.

If you do work for multiple companies, it still helps you.

You setup an Account for each different company, and then setup Tasks underneath each Account.

When you are working on a specific account, you choose that account from a drop-down list, then choose the task you are working on, and click "Start".. it will keep timing you until you click "Stop".. then you can easily switch to another account and work on another task.

At the end of the day, export to CSV – sort by company, and update your invoices with accurate information.

If you use their Accounting Software, it can also export straight to an Invoice that you send your client.

It’s also useful for yourself if you want to find out how much time you spend on each task so you can invoice your next client more accurately :)

Download HourGuard

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Tag your Facebook Fan Page, Group, or Events by using @Mentions

You can now tag your fave Pages, Friends, Events, and Groups in your Status Update using the "@" symbol.

It’s called @mentions and takes advantage of the fact that most of us are using Twitter and are used to typing @something now.

Useful to marketers especially who want to promote their Pages, Events, and Groups. I thought it only worked for people, so finding out today that it also works for the others is happy news to me! :) Making your pages, events and groups much more viral.. when people post their own updates and use the @mentions to reference the group/page/event, then all of their friends now have a link to it.

I also didn’t realize how many Facebook pages that Facebook teams actually update with news, so I’ve promptly now become a fan of each of them..

If you’d also like to follow Facebook news, become a fan of these pages:

• Facebook Design
• Facebook for Influencers
• Facebook Updates
• Facebook Pages
• Facebook Marketing Solutions
• Facebook Platform
• Facebook Ads
• Facebook Online Sales Operations
• Facebook Connect
• Facebook Engineering
• Facebook Engineering Tech Talks
• MarkZuckerberg (created Facebook)
• Facebook Data Team

Have I missed any?

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http://www.facebook.com/twitter/

Thanks to @HowDoIMarketMyBiz ’s Facebook page for posting about this.. I’ve now setup all my Facebook Pages to Tweet to it’s relevant Twitter Account.

This is Facebook’s new Fan Page Twitter application – when you post an update or anything to your Fan Page (Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes, Events, etc)  it will automatically update your Twitter account – with a link back to your Fan Page! Pretty Amazing really! Only one I’ve ever seen that links people back to your fan page.

If you know of any other Facebook Fan Page applications, plugins, and widgets, please post a comment and share with the rest of us.

My Facebok page: ArabStudyAustralia is now linked to http://twitter.com/studyaust

My Facebook page: WordpressPlugins is now linked to http://twitter.com/ilovewordpress

My Facebook page: WebWooky is now linked to http://twitter.com/happyches

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Want an easy to remember Facebook URL for your Profile, Pages, or Applications?

Create an easy-to-remember way to reach your Facebook Pages, Personal Profile, & Application Profiles

Head over to: http://www.facebook.com/username/

Select your page, choose your name, check availability.. if it’s available, it’s yours.

Setup your Facebook Short URL for your Pages, Profile, or Application, then reply to this post with your link to tell us your new easy-to-remember Facebook url :)

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Kept getting this damn An Unexpected HTTP Error occurred during the API request during the past week all of a sudden – usually when I want to write a new post or upgrade on a plugin, or pretty much any link I choose in the backend. 

Annoying but usually refreshing the page and just staying on that tab would get it back up and running again – but I like to multi-task, so when one tab is loading one thing, I’m usually in another tab doing something else, so tonight I decided to see if there was a simple resolution, and thanks to this post on the Wordpress.org forums, I was able to fix it, although it’s more of a bandaid fix, since I’m not sure why it started all of a sudden and didn’t used to do it – probably some beautiful plugin that I can’t live without lol.. 

Open wp_include/http.php file on line 223

I used FTP and copy it to my computer to edit it:

Then I changed the timeout from 5 seconds to 30 seconds:

From this:

To this:

Worked for me and several others who are having the same problem, so if you are having this problem, you might also wish to try it.

Please feel free to share your ideas if you have other possible solutions for others.. 

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I use Jing (JingProject.com) by TechSmith for all my videos, but I found these other screencast sites tonight that let you do it all without installing any software on your computer, these 3 sites (ScreenR, ScreenToaster, and Screenjelly) are a fantastic solution to the growing need for fast interaction with Social Media.

Firstly, ScreenR.. (http://screenr.com/)

Whether you want to use your webcam or record your screen, Screenr is a top super-fast site for recording instant screencasts and posting them directly to Twitter, Your Website, and YouTube.

You need a Twitter account… and when you visit Screenr.com – you can login via Twitter.

Then you just click on "Record" and you’ve begun… seconds later you could post your video to Twitter and YouTube.

• Up to 5 Minutes of Recording
• No software to download (Windows/Mac friendly)
• Before you post, you can review & add a description
• Download it to your computer for further editing if needed
• Upload it directly to Twitter & YouTube
• Videos look good in both HD and FullScreen
• Choose which part of the screen you wish to record.
• Embed into your Blog Post

The Screenr blog is also full of great tips on how to further maximize your experience with Screenr and is a must-read.

1 Minute Tour:

Next up is ScreenToaster… (http://www.screentoaster.com/)

Unlike Screenr, you register for the site and don’t login via Twitter. You register (Free) for the site and can record straight away just like Screenr. They are now experimenting with being able to post to YouTube.

3 Minute Tour

And Finally, Screenjelly (http://www.screenjelly.com/)

Extremely similar to ScreenR, and allows you to directly email, tweet, post to your facebook wall or get the embed code to post directly to your blog.

One of the good things about ScreenR is that it then allows you to share to most of the popular social networks (del.ici.ous, digg, stumbleupon, friendfeed, myspace, and google) after you have finished recording.

It doesn’t have an upload to YouTube feature like ScreenR & ScreenToaster.

With Screenjelly, you can even start recording without first signing in so you can "Give it a Go" to see if you like it :)

And like ScreenR, you login via Twitter, and like ScreenToaster, you can optionally register but you also can login via Facebook.

Chris Pirillo review on Screenjelly:

Have fun Screencasting! :)

Hmm.. something tells me I should’ve made my own screencast in 2 minutes to show you these 3 programs rather than posting all these screenshots lol..

Next time :)

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