Clean Your Dirty Facebook

Facebook launched a new extended profile feature today that will allow you to simplify your default profile display.  It works by “hiding” applications and other profile boxes that may be cluttering up your profile.  This functionality was previously offered by third party Facebook applications like CleanProfile and fills an obvious need in the Facebook community.  Even in the last two days I have had a handful of people specifically use the term “clutter” when referring to Facebook.  As simple as the interface is to use, the clutter can be overwhelming to a new member.

To clean up your profile click on your profile link after logging in.  If this is your first time decluttering, Facebook provides a nice notification box at the top of the screen describing the new service with a link to the extended profile manager, otherwise you can scroll to the very bottom of your profile and click the “edit extended profile” link.

The extended profile manager will list the total number of boxes you have enabled on your profile and will offer suggestions to hide the boxes located at the bottom of the screen.  Check any boxes you want to hide and click OK.  Your profile will now contain links at the bottom of each column to “show more profile boxes.”  Obviously this isn’t rocket science and all the new feature does is prevent existing content from being displayed but it sure beats the MySpace model that requires you to clump jumbled code into the various sections of your profile page.