How to Stop Annoying, Non Sims Social Gamers on Facebook - The Art of Being Newsfeed kind with your Game Achievements

I know, like if it wasn't bad enough with Farmville and all the social games on facebook there's a new kid on the block: The Sims Social.

I have to be honest that to keep my Facebook Newsfeed clear of all the game 'achievements' that pop up every five seconds I started to get into the habit of just blocking every single one of them until I get my Facebook newsfeed back just like it used to be, sigh !

Unfortunately a lot of facebook friends won't know how to do it ( it's quite easy really just hover with your mouse over the right hand corner of the post area and a cog should appear where you can hide the person or block the app). But to be honest with you why should they be doing this 'cleaning' work which is cumbersome, time sapping and frankly simply annoying.

So I decided to write this quick 'how to' so that only your Social Sims Facebook friends who are actually playing the game get the achievement/claim posts and all your non gamer friends don't see any of it so you can keep both camps happy.

One of the best bonus doing this little tactic which will take you just minutes to apply is that you won't lose any friends especially if you've never played any games and suddenly you start to flood their Facebook Newsfeed with all your claims and Social Sims game achievement, your non-gamers friends might think you've become a lunatic or simply joined a game cult !

So how do you go about targeting who receives your Social Sims game updates : just create a list and change the Sims Social app settings to default to that list.

To create a new list make sure you're on the newsfeed section of your Facebook page (click on HOME to make sure ) then click on 'Friends' (left hand side). Then in the middle top of the page click on 'Manage Friends List' on the new page that appears click on 'create list' a pop up will appear in the middle of the page. Add a list name to it I picked 'sims' then add only the people you know are actively playing Sims Social, once you're happy with you list just click on 'create list'. You're done !

Now to make sure when you're within the game and it ask you to share that by default it will send it only to your simeans players. To do that just click on 'Account' (top right hand corner) then on 'account settings' once there on the left hand side pick 'applications settings' look for 'The Sims Social' and click on the blue link 'Edit' (right hand side). Then under 'app privacy' click on 'Edit' next to custom and on the pop up window select 'specific people' and add in the field underneath the name of your list, you will need to type it and it will show up. Then click on 'save settings'. Again you're done.

When posting on your status for the first time once you've done that just double check that it doesn't say 'what you named your list' on the left hand side of the blue post button if it does just click and change it to friends. After that everytime you start the game and you want to share you might want to double check just in case and change it back to your sims' list then it should 'take' from then on whenever you play as long you check/tick the little box where it says 'make default'. If you've made a mistake no biggie you can go over to your wall and change it say from 'Friends' to your sims' list and the post won't show to the non-gamers.

There's one exception to this but it won't affect your friends feed. When some of your Social Sims friends are posting to your wall that will be seen by default to Friends/Friends of Friends depending on your general setting. That's ok because wall posted by other people don't show up on your friends' feed but just in case you don't want them to see all these achievements when they do visit your wall just claim the prize and then delete the post to your keep your wall clean and tidy.

Incidentally this should work for other games too. It take a bit of practice but you will become very popular amongst your friend who want to follow you but do not care about your game achievements and who knows you might see more interaction from them once they realise your life is not all about earning the next level ! wink