Facebook is a great way to waste time. Don’t want to read that business report? Why not log onto your Facebook page? Not in the mood to put the finishing touches on that PowerPoint presentation? Now’s a good time to post about your upcoming family vacation to Disney.

But as good as you may be at procrastinating with Facebook, the odds are good that the following three tips — brought to us by the savvy tech writers at the New York Times’ Gadgetwise column — can boost your time-wasting skills.

Filtering Friends

Do you have a Facebook friend that posts far too often? Maybe there’s not a headline that goes by that this friend doesn’t forward. Maybe this friend posts what he ate at every lunch or what she thinks about every reality show on cable TV.

You need to block this friend’s posts. And you need to do it without resorting to a de-friending.

There is hope. As Gadgetwise says, Facebook lets you trim the content you receive in your news feed and filter out updates from specific sources. Find an update from a person you’d like to eliminate from your news feed and click on the arrow that pops up when you move your mouse’s cursor over the top right side of the update. A menu will show on the screen. Choose “unsubscribe from status updates” for that person to block messages.

Extending Messages, not Friendships

Here’s another nifty Facebook tip: You can send messages to people without first sending them a friend request. Simply go to the Facebook page of the non-friends to which you want to send messages. Search for the “message” button on the upper-right corner of the page. People who let others send them messages without first befriending them will have this button.

Connecting Facebook Chat to Other Services

Did you know that you can connect Facebook Chat to other services? It’s true. If you are a Hotmail user, you can link your Windows Live profile to Facebook. This allows you to chat with online friends directly from your mail window.

You can do the same with instant message services such as Yahoo messenger. Simply search Facebook for information on how you can connect your chat programs to the service.

Read more at Gadgetwise by clicking here.

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