How to Make Facebook Even More Useful

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

Facebook, with more than 300 million users, is now the third-largest country in the world. That’s nuts. It increasingly seems that Facebook is the first, and often last, stop for many people navigating their social spheres, doing everything from keeping in touch to planning events. It’s an excellent social network, and developers are turning into much, much more through applications, APIs, Facebook Connect, and more.

But  it’s still not a perfect tool. There are lots of little things about Facebook that could be improved, and luckily for us, many of the solutions have been found. These aren’t features built into Facebook (yet), but with the help of a few services and add-0ns, Facebook can be made even more fun and useful.

Here are six ways to make Facebook more usable, fun, and helpful:

Keyboard Shortcuts

For power-users of almost any application, knowing how to navigate using the keyboard is a huge time-saver, making the whole process more efficient. Facebook’s no exception. There’s a Greasemonkey script called Facebook Keyboard Navigation that, when installed, lets you move around Facebook with your keyboard.

Press B to go to a list of your friends’ birthdays, E to see all your events, and many more. You can edit the shortcuts to your liking, and it makes Facebook much easier to navigate. You’ll need Greasemonkey, but that’s as simple as installing the Firefox extension and then clicking “install” on the script.

Facebook Lite

One thing I hate about Facebook is how cluttered it can be – with apps, Farmville, and all other manner of annoyances, it’s hard to find what you’re actually looking for. That’s where Facebook Lite comes in. Facebook Lite boils Facebook down to just its basics – walls, messages, photos, video, and a few other things – and makes it into a faster-loading site that’s easier to navigate. If all you’re looking to do is keep in touch, look at pictures, and the like, Facebook Lite makes Facebook a whole lot easier to use.

Calendar Integration

With a simple tool called fbCal, you can subscribe to a calendar of all your events and friends’ birthdays, right in whatever calendar application you already use – Google Calendar, iCal, anything. You’ll be able to see all your events, plus your friends’ birthdays, without having to go to Facebook and remember to check. I forget literally anything that’s not on my calendar, so having all my Facebook information integrated directly is huge.

If you don’t want the whole list, there’s a great Greasemonkey script called Facebook to Google Calendar that lets you add an event to whatever calendar you’re logged into at the time. In one click, you’ve created an event on Google Calendar reminding you about your upcoming Facebook event. For GCal users, it’s a huge streamlining of the process.

All The Little Things

This is one of those “I never knew I needed this!” things that I love so much. Facebook Fixer is a Greasemonkey script that does a huge number of things to improve, bit by bit, the whole experience of using Facebook. It does things like making profile pictures and photos bigger, letting you download videos, integrating with your calendar, adding a few keyboard shortcuts, and automatically reloading pages when Facebook encounters an error.

There are a huge number of features with Facebook Fixer, and it’s a great script. It is a little buggy at times, but I’ve found that the benefits (particularly the homepage customization it offers) far outweigh the periodic reloading of Facebook I have to do.

Facebook Toolbar

Facebook, particularly the chat and messaging services, are beginning to replace both IM and email for a lot of people. But they still require actually logging into Facebook. With the Facebook Toolbar Firefox extension, Facebook becomes more widely available. You’ll get notifications right within the toolbar, as well as the ability to search Facebook from anywhere, share websites on Facebook, and to see what your friends are up to. For the always-on Facebook user, the Toolbar is a crucial thing to have.

All the Apps

Ever since Facebook opened itself up as a platform for applications, there have been approximately 51 million applications created for use when you’re logged in to Facebook. I can’t even begin to name the best ones, but here are three lists of some of the best apps available for Facebook.

With a little work, Facebook can actually be made to do almost anything you could possibly want to do on the Web. It’s a fantastic communication tool, a way to have a lot of fun, and even a way to get things done in a more efficient way. It’s also a huge time suck, but so it goes.

What’s your favorite thing about Facebook, or the one thing you wish existed most?