Control Your Apps: Twitter and Facebook

You have to love the way that social networking is changing. It used to be a straight forward way of communicating with people over the web, like a glorified email service. But it has since morphed into something entirely different, with interaction on a level never seen before. You can even play games, shop or share common causes through your Facebook profile, or connect with groups and hold chats through Twitter.

Most of this is done through apps, which are given your permission to access your information, post on your wall and sometimes share your details with other third party providers. All of which might seem OK at the time, but can become aggravating in the future. Especially from apps that take it on themselves to post all the time.

We all have that friend that has nothing but Facebook game updates being posted on their wall forty times a day. Or that person we follow on Twitter who is always having their profile hijacked by @ messages from companies or websites they have added to their app list. If you don’t have that friend, there is a good chance you are that friend.

Don’t be that guy. Just manage your apps and control what has access to your details and account.

Facebook

The most common kind of app spam comes from Facebook. Chances are, you have a whole bunch of apps you don’t even remember using. They could have been from years ago, when you decided you have to find out what kind of wolf a survey said you were. Or a game you wanted to try and so allowed access to, but that never worked and so you forgot about.

You have to control these one by one, unfortunately. Just go to your main page and look at the left hand sidebar. There will be a portion labeled Apps. Hover over it and hit ‘More’, which should take you to a page that lists every app you have access through your account.

Some of these will be basic Facebook features you want to keep, like messages, find friends, notes and events. What you are looking for are the third party apps, such as games or businesses. To manage them, click on the little pencil beside the names.

This will give you the option of removing the app, favoriting the app or editing the settings. If you choose to edit, you will be able to choose who sees posts on your behalf, when to be notified and what information they have access to. In most cases, removing the app entirely is going to be better.

Twitter

Twitter is just as simple as Facebook, and in some ways much easier thanks to the basic nature of the apps provided by the site. Just go to the Applications page when you are signed into your account. It will list every app you have subscribed to since opening your account. You may be surprised by how many there are.

You will be able to revoke access to any apps you want. If you decide you want them to have access again, just go back to the page and click Undo Revoke Access. That’s it…very simple.

Stop suffering the irritation of social media apps. You can control or entirely remove them with a few clicks of your mouse, and without any fuss.

Image Credits: 1, 2.