5 Facebook Features That You May Not Know About

Make Facebook Upside Down or in Pirate Speak

Remember 10 years ago, when Pirates were all the rage for a minute? Well, at one point the Facebook engineers got swept up in this ironic buccaneer frenzy and programmed a peculiar Easter Egg that allows you to translate your Facebook interface into Pirate (Blabber t' yer mates) or Upsidedown (əlıɟoɹd ʇıp∃) speak.

Does this sound appealing to you for some reason? Go to General Account Settings > Langauge and you can change your settings to either "English (Pirate)" or "English (Upside Down)." Think that's a whimsical little feature that you will never ever get sick of?! You're wrong. It's actually quite annoying.

There's Lots of Secret Emoji on FB

Emoji. They take away some of the horrible pain of writing in plain language. Facebook will render all the usual face emoticons into pictorial representations: :) :D ^_^ . You know the ones. But there's also a whole bunch that you may not even be using.

(y) = thumbs-up 'like' symbol
(^^^) = a great white shark
:|] = a robot
:poop: = well, you know
<(") = a penguin
:Putnam: = the head of former Facebook engineer, Chris Putnam who left the company in 2010

You can use these in wall posts, chats, and comments, but they don't always seem to render in mobile. You can find a full run-down of FB emoticons here.

Detail Your Facebook Romance

If you want to see the detailed Internet history of you and your significant other, go to www.facebook.com/us and you will see the complete Facebook history with whomever you are listed as in a relationship with ("us," get it?). If you're not listed as being in a relationship, it will just go to your regular page because Facebook thinks that you are just in love with yourself.

Don't Let Facebook Track Your Mobile Browsing

Here's one feature you unfortunately won't find anywhere in Facebook, and that's the problem. When Facebook announced it was going to give users more control over ads in order to make them more targeted, it didn't exactly publicize the fact that it would also start using your app- and Web-browsing history to show targeted ads from advertisers. 

Create an Interest List

There's a little-known Facebook function boringly called "interest lists." It's basically Facebook's version of Twitter lists (and should not to be confused with Facebook's "Friends lists"). Interest Lists are curated collection of posts from websites, companies, or individuals that you follow in one streamlined feed (e.g. "indie hip-hop" or "local restaurants"). Interest lists may be kept private just for you or a some friends, or can be made public for the world to follow.

To access interest lists, scroll down to the "Interests" link in the left column, hover over the header and click on "more." On the next page, click the "+Add Interests" button and you will have the option to search and follow other publicly available interest lists or create your own.