Arun asks: Most of my acquaintances are on Orkut and Facebook, so i simply don’t have time to follow up on my Friendster profile any more. Can you help me deleting my Friendster web page?

Answer:

Thanks Arun for the question. With the plethora of social networks available online, it’s hard to be able to manage more than 2-3 web profiles. Luckily, social networks such as Friendster for instance, have put in place relatively simple procedures for canceling an account with them. Follow the below steps to effectively delete your Friendster account.

1. Login to your Friendster Account.
2. Select Settings from the upper right hand corner of the main page.
3. On the Settings page, scroll down to the bottom and click Cancel Account.
4. The cancel account page will load, now go ahead and scroll to the middle of the page where the Cancellation form is located.
5. Fill in the required details such as the e-mail address of your Friendster account and current password.
6. Check the confirmation box, “Yes, I want to cancel my Friendster account”.
7. Select proceed and you will then successfully deleted your Friendster profile account.

Jackie asks: What are MySpace bulletins and how i can get the most out of them?

Answer:

MySpace bulletins are quick messages that you can send to your MySpace friends list. Bulletins are sent to all your friends on MySpace,and you won’t be able to exclude some of your friends from the bulletin’s recipient list.Bulletins are specially handy in occasions that you have something exciting to say, for instance a new job, a promotion at work, or just something funny that happened to you. MySpace bulletins are also used by bands in order to promote gigs and new albums.
MySpace bulletins are quite easy to send just follow these instructions:

1. Login to MySpace.com
2. In your profile click Compose, then Bulletins and Post Bulletins (if you are using the old MySpace Control panel just hit Post Bulletin from your profile.
3. Enter a descriptive title for your MySpace bulletin.
4. Enter the bulletin’s subject. Note that you can apply any html codes to the bulletin subject text. You can even set MySpace bulletin backgrounds and
5. Once you finish to write your bulletin subject, i recommend that you’ll double check it for typos etc’. Remember – all your friends will receive yor bulletin.
6. Click Post
7. Clik Post Bulletin

Question:

Julie asks: How can i hide my online status on Facebook, so friends and network members won’t know if i am online now?

Answer:

Updated answer by Gili –

Lately Facebook has integrated the ability to manage your online status in the newly released chat application.
In order to change your online status, just click the little chat icon in the bottom right corner of your web browser (while signed into Facebook) and pick “Go Online” or “Go Offline” option when prompted.
This setting controls the online status in your previously changeable through Privacy>>Profile.

====================== Outdated Answer ======================

Here’s what you need to do in order to hide the “I am online now.” signal on Facebook:

• Login to Facebook.com
• Hit Privacy and then Profile
• In the drop down on the right side of the Online Status select either Only Me or No one.
• Hit Save
• From now on, people in your network nor friends won’t be able to notice if you are online on Facebook.

Got more Facebook questions? Send them via my contact form and get them answered!

Question:

Rick asks: I would like to change my Facebook background.Not sure it’s possible as all Facebook profiles layout look similar to me. Any clues?

Answer:

I have addressed this issue in my post on how to modify your Facebook background colors. One of Facebook’s key features is the uniformly clean and non cluttered UI that makes the application easy on the eye, and thus, i believe that chances we will be able to customize the background layout color scheme of our Facebook is low. What we can do, is to leverage Mozilla Firefox, Greasemonkey and the Facebook Auto-Colorizer script in order to display custom backgrounds for all Facebook profiles and photo albums we browse. The pages color scheme is built dynamically in order to match the photos displayed in the page

Important note: This trick will only work only when you access Facebook from a Mozilla Firefox browser with Greasemonkey and the Auto-Colorizer scripts installed.

Not long ago, a reader told me he would like to fresh-start his MySpace profile and asked what is the best way to delete his existing MySpace account.

Answer:

Well, unlike other social networks, MySpace offers a pretty straightforward process that will allow you to cancel your MySpace account pretty easily. One thing to note before closing a MySpace account is that on cancelation, MySpace wipes off your entire account contents (including pictures, videos, blogs, codes and customizations) .Therefore, it is your responsibility to backup your MySpace account contents before deleting it.

Here’s an easy-to-use procedure that will allow you to delete a MySpace account.

I have a linkedin profile in which i specified all my personal and professional details i would like to publish over the web. Now, i am interested to publish my linkedin page over the web, so every time someone googles my name he/she will have my profile listed in the search engine results. How to make it happen?

Answer:

A well crafted Linkedin profile can by all means make a great business card. By default, your profile is hidden and won’t appear in web engine searches unless you change its settings. That means that only LinkedIn members can view your details and not the entire world.

Note that before you go on and publish your Linkedin profile on the web, you might want make sure that you allow only relevant parts of your profile to show up in a web search.

• First login to LinkedIn
• Then open the My Profiletab
• Now hit Edit My Public Profile
• Check the Full View (recommended) button.
• Now comes the important part – uncheck all profile sections (picturem current positions, Interests, groups etc’) that you don’t want to make public.
• Hit Save all changes. Voila your Linked profile is now public. Please allow a day or so to appear in Google’s and Yahoo’s search engine results.

If you happen to move to a new city, or change schools you may be in the position of wanting to change your primary Facebook network. Thankfully Facebook has a very simple process in place for leaving your primary network:

1. Log into your Facebook account.

2. From the tabs at the top of the screen click into the “Networks” tab.

3. You will then be brought to your primary network page.

4. From here you will see a search box in the top right of the page, you can type in the name of the new network you wish to join.

5. Once you find your new network you will be able to join the network by clicking “Join this network”. Keep in mind in order to join a school network you will be required to provide your school email address to verify you are a student.

By joining a new Network you will be forced to leave your current network. You should also be careful when switching networks as Facebook will only allow you to do so twice every 60 days.

A opposed to other social networks (such as MySpace for example), closing a LinkedIn account wasn’t that easy until not so long ago. Things have changed since then, and currently Linkedin is providing a simple procedure for you to close your account:

1. Login to the account you want to close, then hit Accounts & Settings.
2. Under Personal Info, hit Close your account
3. Specify a reason and hit Continue.

Note that:

• It might take up to 72 hours from the time you close it, until your LinkedIn profile will become un-viewable by your connections.
• Even after closing it, your LinkedIn profile might still be viewable (at least for some time) in search engines.
• If for some reason, you do close you account by mistake, you can still re-open it by contacting LinkedIn Customer Service.

Thanks to my readers who updated me of this change

While answering a few questions over at Yahoo Answers, I came across a considerable number of Facebook users who are looking for ways to  accomplish one of the coolest Facebook tricks: to modify their profile layout. Unlike MySpace, Facebook doesn’t allow you to insert custom html codes to modify your profile. This is one of the features that makes Facebook so unique. Everyone has the same looking page pretty much which lowers loading times and is much easier to use and navigate.

Nevertheless, if you use Firefox as your web browser (if not i strongly recommend you to download and start using it:) ), you can leverage Greasemonkey and other custom JavaScript Facebook scripts in order to modify the color scheme of your Facebook layout. Greasemonkey  is a Mozilla Firefox addin that lets you modify the way your Firefox pages look and run. 

After you install Firefox and Greasemonkey, you can leverage the Facebook Auto Colorizer script, in order to have your profile color scheme changing based on your photo.

Please note that this hack will work only on PCs which have either Firefox, Greasemonkey and the Auto-Colorizer script installed, and won’t work when accessing Facebook through Internet Explorer.

Question:

How do I make my own S4S code for MySpace?

Answer:

S4S (Support for Support) is used quite often on MySpace through bulletins for one to gain popularity (more friends). The code usually contains your picture as well as a quick description explain why one should add you. Your picture is also a link that can be clicked to view your profile or to add you. Basically you exchange S4S codes with another user and post them in a bulletin. Their friends will then see the bulletin and hopefully add you. Use the following code and steps below to create your own S4S code.

<A TARGET=”_blank” HREF=”URL”><img src=”PICURL”></A>

1. Insert the URL to either your MySpace profile or your ?Add me? link.
2. In the PICURL section, insert the link to your favorite image of yourself.
3. Now you’re ready to S4S, simply post a bulletin saying you will S4S, then people will hopefully message you asking to exchange codes.