How to Not Spam Your Facebook Friends Who Don’t Speak Your Native ‎Language

24 February 2010 Posted by Eyal Sela in category: Web Presence

People who have friends on Facebook from different countries encounter a problem – in what language should they write their status messages? If they use their native language, their friends from other countries will not understand anything. On the other hand, if they only write in English, for example, then it might be difficult for some of their friends to understand it. Here is the solution for multilingual Facebook friends:

Create a friends list of all the people who doesn't speak your native language, and filter out the message that they can't understand.

Let's see how to do this. [For the sake of this post I will use Hebrew as a native language, and English for friends from other countries].

Create a list of people who doesn't speak your language

To create a list of friends do the followings:
  1. Click 'Friends' on the left sidebar.
  2. Click the 'Create a List' button (it is right on the right hand side of the 'Friends' title at the top of the page – see image below).create a list of friends on Facebook
    Create a list of friends on Facebook
  3. You should now see a pop-up window titled 'Create New List'. Give the list a name (for example: 'doesn't speak Hebrew') and add all of your friends who doesn't speak your native language to that list.
  4. Click 'Create List' once you are finished.
*Note that from now on, whenever you friend someone who doesn't speak your native language you have to add him to the list*

Filter out messages not in English

Now, all you need to do when you want to write a status message in your native language, is tell Facebook not to show it to the people who can't read it. Follow these steps to do it:

Click the the lock icon on its left hand side of the 'Share' button

Click the the lock icon on its left hand side of the 'Share' button

  1. Write the a status message as usual.
  2. Click the the lock icon on the left side of the 'Share' button, and click 'Custom' (see image below).
  3. In the pop-up window that opens, under 'Hide this from', type the name of the list of people who doesn't speak your native language.Under 'Hide this from', type the name of the list of people who doesn't speak your native language

    under 'Hide this from', type the name of the list of people who doesn't speak your native language

  4. Click 'save settings' and once the pop up window closes, click the 'Share' button.

That is it. Only people in the list you specified will not see this status message. The rest of your  friends will.

Make these your default settings

If you wish to make these your default settings (that is, that by default People in this group will not see your messages, unless you specify otherwise) – go back to step three in the previous section and check 'Make this my default setting' at the bottom of the window. *note that these settings will apply to all the status messages you have ever written, not only to new ones!* I suggest following the last section in Amit Agarwal's post How to Cross-Check Your Facebook Privacy Settings to make sure the new settings works correctly.

Related posts:

  1. How to Send a Message to the Guests of an Event Created By a Facebook Fan Page
  2. Status Search – Search within Your Friends’ Status Updates
  3. Add an Alternate Name and IM Nicknames to Facebook to ‎Make Yourself Easier to Find
  4. Create a New Email With the Title, Content, and a Link to a Webpage Using a Gmail Bookmarklet
  5. Facebook Acquired Friendfeed

Tweet

5 Responses to “How to Not Spam Your Facebook Friends Who Don’t Speak Your Native ‎Language”

  1. labnol 24 February 2010 at 12:42 pm (PERMALINK)

    Brilliant tip!

    Reply
    Author
  2. Harsh Agrawal 2 April 2010 at 1:08 am (PERMALINK)

    Eyal this is really a nice and useful tip. I have few people who does not speak english and this is going to be very helpful for me to stop them receiving meaningless messages..

    Reply
    Author