Can't Unfollow or Unfriend People on Social Media? Mute Them!

Tired of your friends, family, or colleague who keeps making non-stop posts about what they ate for lunch or how they look when they woke up? The problem is, you simply can't unfollow or unfriend them without them knowing that you did. Sometimes, it's easier to mute them, and you can check their page every now and then if you want to keep up appearances.

Check out these guides on how you can mute people on social media without completely getting rid of them.

Twitter

For some, they can still find it easy to be annoying in 140 characters or less. Good thing you can now mute them and they won't even find out. They'll still be able to interact with you and respond to your tweets, so you don't have to worry about offending them.

All you need to do is to tap one of their tweets, and then hit the options menu (three circles next to the like button). Hit the Mute option there and you're done.

Facebook

This is one of the most common social media sites where you would really like to delete people from your news feed but you can't.

If you're getting spammed or you've had enough selfie posts of someone in particular, you can tap on a recent update and choose to receive less updates from that person. You can pick from the list (as shown below) depending on what you feel what's right for you. This method is nicer than completely deleting them from your Friends list, and it saves the hassle in case you bump into them in person.

Eventually, their posts will stop coming in to your news feed if you keep hiding their content.

LinkedIn

Even though we all know that LinkedIn is a professional social media site, there's always somebody who doesn't understand where to draw the line when it comes to self-promotion. You can mute or advert a conversation easily by clicking the arrow in the upper-right corner beside the Follow button. You can choose to hide that particular update or conversation, and it will stop cropping up in your news feed every two minutes.

Deleting people in this site is not a very good thing to do if you want to stay professional and use the site for networking or business purposes.

Google+

Google+ can be considered as a much hated social media platform even though it has a number of loyal users -- a number of them are also annoying. To mute a page or person, click on their name, then click the arrow down button at the bottom. Choose the option to mute the annoying/offending page and they'll never know you did that to them.

Important Twitter Limitations You May Not Be Aware Of

Recently, Twitter has announced that it's planning to increase the number of characters from 140 to 10,000. This is something that has caused users to complain because they feel that this new limit is going to make Twitter lose its identity. For better of for worse, the 140 character limitation is the only limit the social network has. Below are some Twitter limitations you may not know existed.

Usernames can only be 15 characters long
Usernames on Twitter can have a maximum of 15 characters, and that does not include the @ symbol. You can naturally add letters, numbers, and underscores. You could even create a username with a single character if there were any available.

Send a maximum of 1,000 messages a day
Since Twitter allowed users to send direct message to anyone, it provided a limit of 1,000 message for its users to avoid spam.

You can't tweet more than 2,400 times a day
A lot of people spend a lot of time on Twitter, but it's actually hard to believe that someone would send tweet more than 2,400 times a day. To pull that off, you would have to send 100 tweets an hour without sleeping. This is Twitter's another way to avoid spam.

You can't follow more that 2,000 users without limits
This one might just be interesting on of them all. This is probably the only limit of Twitter that you may possibly run into. Once you follow 2,000 users, you can only have 10% more followers than the people you follow. In other words, if you want to follow more than 2,000 people, you have more than 1,800 followers. When you reach a limit, Twitter will let you know with an error message telling you that.

Twitter won't allow to create more than 1,000 lists
Lists are very useful tool when you want to get information about a certain something of read tweets from a particular circle of people because you don't have enough time to read the entire timeline. However, it is difficult to believe that someone would have 1,00 lists (or even 50 for that matter). This seems like a method to avoid getting too much attention from other users by using dirty tactics.

Every account can only follow 5,000 users total
If you have somehow manage to follow 5,000 users, you will face limits as to the number of new users you can follow. Every Twitter account is open to limits, even API and high profile accounts. Twitter will not allow you to follow more than 1,000 accounts per day, and the social network says it's a technical limit to prevent flagrant abuse from spam accounts.

Even though Twitter says you can't follow more than 5,000 accounts, there is a way to work around that. You will need to wait until your have more followers before you can follow anyone else.

Some Do's and Don'ts When Using Instagram

Instagram is not only one of the fastest growing platforms in the social networking world, it's also one of the biggest there is. If you love looking at beautiful pictures, then you'll love Instagram -- or you already are one of its 300 million active users. It's another way of expressing your thoughts and feelings thru pictures. But with great power comes great responsibility since any social media platform is only as engaging as its users. Even though you can freely post just about anything you want, and that there are no definitive rules about using Instagram, there are still some things you need to consider if you want to gain followers.

Check out below our collection of do's and don'ts that will help you become an effective -- and less annoying IGer (Instagrammer, that is).

DO: Use same usernames for your Twitter and Instagram accounts

Most of the time, those people who follow you on Instagram would likely want to follow you on Twitter as well. With having different usernames, they have to search for and browse through all your online identities, they might give up doing so. It's good to keep your username simple by using the same handle on each account.

DON'T: Asking people to follow you

It's like giving out solicitations to people whom you don't really know. It's plain and simple -- don't look like cheap and beg for people to follow you.

DON'T: Like every photo you see

People who follow you see your stamp of approval as meaningful; however, liking every photo you see may diminish that value of that stamp. Remember, no one likes an Instagroupie. So, make your "Likes" count.

DON'T: Spam your followers

While consistency is good, the quickest way to get unfollowed is to bomb your followers with too many posts. Each user has their own limit as to how many pics is considered too much -- well, flooding their feeds with six selfie pictures you took this morning before going to work may be a good example of that. Posting one photo a day is a good rule of thumb. Keep this in mind and be sure to do this, otherwise you'll lose followers big time.

DO: Take interesting and meaningful photos

Photos can be interesting depending on the person looking at it. For some, they'll take time to look at your snapshots of nature or something that really interests you, while some while just never give it more than a 2-second look. But if a post gets quite a number of likes, then you can safely say that it's made of quality and sense because a number of people actually liked it. You got the point?

DON'T: Give into gimmicks

Phone manufacturers and app makers as well are constantly looking for new gimmicks to peddle the customers. Video, hyperlapse, slo-mo, and photo montages are all great, but see to it that you're using them wisely and for more reason than just the novelty of it all.

DON'T: Abuse Hashtags

Ideally, there are three main reasons in using a hashtag: One, so other people can find your photos; Two, so you can easily find your photos later; and Three, to be ironic. Just remember to use them sparingly as it can be time-consuming and senseless. Imagine you posting photos with almost 50 generic hashtags like #food #dinner #hungry #foodporn #foodgasm and the list goes on. Don't you ever get tired of typing all of it? But if you're the one reading the post, you'll definitely get bored reading it.

Organize Your Twitter Feeds by Creating Lists

One very useful feature in Twitter that seems to be left behind is its ability to create Lists. Lists allow you to organize your Twitter feed in order for you to see tweets coming from people with specific interests and expertise, or whatever reason you might want to categorize into a group.

Twitter Lists are useful because they let you view tweets from a select group of users. It's almost like alternative Twitter logins, where you are following a unique set of people. For example, you can create a list of your real-life friends so that when you want to socialize with these group of people via Twitter, you can avoid the hassle of scanning through other non-friend tweets in your main Twitter feed.

Here are two important things you need to know about Twitter Lists:

1.     You don't have to be following a user in order to add him or her to a list.

2.     Tweets from your lists do not show up in your main or primary feed.

If you're interested on some Twitter accounts and would like to read them from time to time, but not to the point where you want to see every single tweet they make on your primary feed, you can bundle them into a list and then you can visit that list anytime you find it convenient to check out their tweets. Yeah, I know, that's really cool. Check out below some examples of Twitter Lists that you might find applicable to you:

News sources	This is a common kind of list that you can create for those group of Twitter accounts who make it a habit to tweet news. You can create Lists with local news, global news, or you can even be more specific, such as technology or science.
Friends and family	Show them how much you really care by creating a group just for them so that their tweets will not get lost in your Twitter feed.
Colleagues or co-workers	Always be in the inner circle when it comes to the latest buzz and happenings in your workplace by creating a central place to check it all.
Competitors	This is ideal for those in the business industry -- add accounts in your private list to easily check on the latest tweets and secretly find out some sneak peek or "behind-the-scenes" of your competitor(s).
Topics of interest	Depending on your interests and hobbies, you may also follow bloggers, sports teams, authors, artists, or other people who tweet about a particular interest to you. You may also consider making a list for funny tweets or a private list of #NSFW (not safe for work) tweeters.

And finally, here's how you can create your own Twitter List:

First, sign in to your Twitter account. By the way, these steps are basically the same whether you'll be logging in via Web browser or mobile app to use Twitter. Once you're signed in, click the gear icon in the upper right section then select Lists. On the page that opens, click the Create new list button located on the right. A pop-up box will appear asking you to name the list, provide a description, then mark it either Public or Private. Fill out these fields then hit theSave list button to proceed.

On the next page is a clean blank list -- no members, no followers, no tweets, nothing. Now, use the search box featured front and center to look for people that you would like to add on your list. By the way, you can always add or remove members on a particular list as you use Twitter.

As you use Twitter and discover new or other Twitter accounts that you would like to add to your list, simply click the gear icon that appears on any user, and then select Add or remove from lists. It would be better to look through the list of people you are currently following to see if you want to group any of them into a list. You can also search for a hashtag and then add the resulting users who pop up to make a list. Another way is to look at other users' accounts to see who they follow or who follows them, and then find more people that you can add to your lists.

Organizing your Twitter feeds is so much easier with the help of the Lists feature. Don't tire yourself with cluttered tweets -- organize your Twitter feeds and you'll definitely thank yourself later on.

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