I love Facebook. I truly do. But their notification system leaves something to be desired. I get notifications for all kinds of crap. 🙂 (Excuse the language, but anything that takes my time without my permission is very frustrating.)

If it drives you crazy, too, I hope you will LOVE this blog post that I just whipped up.

What are Facebook Notifications?

There are three types of Facebook Notifications.

1. Email Notifications that come to your email address.
2. The Little Flashy Notifications that pop on your screen as you're on the site
3. The Notifications that you see in the notifications bar.

We're going to talk about #2 &  #3 in this post. (Although I also have info on how to manage the email notifications in the PS below, just in case they're making you bonkers, too.)

What is the notifications bar? Look up by the Facebook logo when you're on Facebook.com. There's an earth to the right. It changes number to let you know there are notifications for you.

The notifications could be anything from someone liking one of your comments, to a comment that was left on one of your posts, to a game request, to an app, to an event invite.

They can be really helpful to let you know who is interacting with you, if you can keep all the other clutter out.

This is what we're trying to manage.

First Turn off the Group Notifications that you Don't Want.

One of the types of notifications that can get out of hand quickly is your group notifications.

If there are groups that you don't need anymore (or that you were added to without your permission), you can leave them. That obviously stops the notifications.

BUT – what if there's a group that you love? And, you want to stop in once a day and see what's up, but you don't want to be getting “dinged” all day long.

1. Go to that group.
2. On the right side of the screen, it says “Notifications”.
3. Click that.
4. Then, choose which types of notifications you would like to see (if any).

You have your choice of just getting notifications when friends post, turning off the notifications that pop up on screen entirely, or updating the email preferences for all groups (which is covered in teh PS below).

When You're Following a Post that You're No Longer Interested In.

Let's say you “Like” or Comment on a post that a friend made on their profile because you are trying to be nice. What you did not expect was for everyone and their grandma to start arguing in the comments on that post.

So, your little notification light is going crazy and you've got the bottom corner of your screen flashing every few minutes in all caps as someone else starts yelling. AHHHHH.

Here's what you do. Find the original post (by clicking on one of your notifications) and then click the “Unfollow Post” link.

See it?

That's much better.

Turning off Game Notifications and all that Jazz.

I keep my notifications clean, if you haven't noticed. Time is money.  Here's how I turn off the notifications from FarmVille and all that stuff.

(Excuse the secrecy but my latest notifications were from my private “Failed Adoptions” support group which is obviously not businessy stuff. So, I had to block it out in order to finish this post.)

So, let's say that I want to stop getting invites to the “Birthdays” app. I'm not necessarily saying that I do, but we'll use it as an example. 🙂

When you open your notifications, all you have to do is hold your mouse to the right side of that particular notification and an “X” appears. You click that.

You will see this message next:

At that point, you can choose to turn it off, or if I had accidentally clicked on Lain's notification instead, I could quickly say “NOOOOO. Keep on!” 🙂

I hope this saves your sanity. It's definitely helping mine.

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

PS. Here's the scoop on managing email notifications.

How Do you Turn Off Unnecessary Email Notifications in Your Settings?

If you go to your Account Settings, there is a tab called “Notifications” inside there. (Or click here: Facebook Email Notifications)

When you go there, you will see a screen that looks like this:

Scroll down the page. You have the option of choosing what you will and will not get email notifications about.

I would say DEFINITELY get notifications anytime someone posts on your wall, comments on your wall, or tags a photo of you. (Just to make sure your old high school buddies don't go drunk posting old embarrassing pictures of you or something.) The rest is pretty much optional.