Tech for Luddites

In the early days of Facebook, every new feature seemed to be trumpeted to the world. Nowadays, however, features show up without any fanfare and therefore a lot of users don’t even know they exist.

Here are two features a lot of people don’t know about, which I know because I often see people sharing posts to “save them for later” or adding a comment so they can “follow the conversation.”

Bonus: Both these features are available from the same place. So when you see a post with a link or video you don’t want to click through to/watch immediately or there’s one where you want to see how others are responding to it, simply mouse over it and an arrow will appear at the top right (on mobile apps, the arrow displays by default). When you click it, a dropdown menu will appear with several options, depending on what type of post it is. The two I’m referring to are Save Post (may also be Save Link, Save Photo, or Save Video) and Turn on Notifications for This Post.

Save Post

If you click this option, you can find the post again later at facebook.com/saved. Theoretically a Saved link is supposed to appear in the Favorites list in the left-hand sidebar, but it never shows up in mine.

Tip: This is also a handy feature for saving your own posts if you think in the future you may want to refer to it again.

Turn on Notifications for This Post

When you select this option, you’ll start seeing notifications at the top of your Facebook page when people comment on it, even if you don’t add a comment yourself. It doesn’t notify you about Likes.

If you get tired of all the notifications, you can turn them off from the same menu (the label changes to say Turn Off Notifications) or from the dropdown arrow that appears when you roll over the actual notification at the top of the page.

Tip: I like this option when I see a post where a friend has liked or commented on a post by some page I don’t normally follow and where I don’t want to publicly post a comment.

Were you aware of these features? If so, do you have other tips for using them? If not, do you think you’ll start using them now? Let me know in the comments below!

You may also be interested in:

The Facebook News Feed: How to (Sort of) Control What You See

Change Who You’re Posting/Liking/Commenting As on Your Facebook Page