How to find your friends on Facebook
BY READERS DIGEST
1st Jan 2015 Technology
Top tips to find you way around Facebook
How do I find people that I know?
Facebook makes it easy to find friends by generating suggestions based on the information you have provided and the friends you have already. Don't be surprised to see photographs of work colleagues, ex-partners or forgotten schoolmates pop up on your screen.
- When you first join, you are automatically directed to the welcome page, which contains a list of friend suggestions. All you need to do is to click on the Add Friend button to send an invite.
- If you are on your home page or profile page, click on the Find Friends button at the top right of the screen. Here you will find a list of People you may know plus a list of anyone who has sent you a friend request that you haven't responded to yet. You can fill in your email address if you want Facebook to search your email contacts for users of the site. It also allows you to search for people who have added a specific workplace, home town or similar to their information. And it gives you the option to invite a specific friend or acquaintance to join Facebook by filling in his or her email address or name.
- To check if a specific person is on Facebook, type his or her name into the blank search bar at the top of your screen. A list of people with that name will pop up on your screen. Find the right person by looking at the photograph shown (or at the list of friends associated with that account), then click on the Add Friend button to make contact.
Someone who has hundreds of friends is much less likely to spot your absence than someone with just a handful.
Can I get rid of a friend once I have added him or her?
Yes, you can. It's easy to 'unfriend' someone. Simply go to their profile page and click on the gear icon at the far right of his or her name, then click Unfriend.
Will the person know I have done that? I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
No notification is sent out when you unfriend someone, so he or she won't automatically realise that you have removed yourself. But your name will no longer appear in his or her friends' list, and this might be noticed eventually; someone who has hundreds of friends is much less likely to spot your absence than someone with just a handful.
I don't want to unfriend my neighbour, but she posts dull updates every hour. Is there a way of removing them?
You can hide someone's updates very easily. Simply let your cursor hover over his or her post; an arrow will appear in the top-right corner. Click on this, and you have the option to hide a particular post or all posts from this person. If you want to report a post as spam or containing upsetting content, follow the same procedure and then select the option you want.
I hid someone and now I quite miss the updates! Can I get them back?
It's quite common to regret hiding someone's posts. To get your friend's posts back, go to your home page and let your cursor hover over News Feed in the left-hand menu. When the little pencil (the edit icon) appears, click on it and then click on Edit Settings. A list of friends and apps that you have hidden appears; to reinstate their posts, click on the X next to their name and press the Save button. Their status updates should again appear in your news feed from now on.
