Facebook Tip of the Day Your “Other” Folder
How often do you check messages in your Other folder on Facebook? What’s the other folder? you may ask, which was my response too. It’s next to your normal Inbox messages in the menu bar icon that looks like two quotes. Click on the icon, as for normal messages, and see how in a sneaky way it says “Other” in grey letters that are nearly invisible. Embarrassing but true, I just learned of this and feel like an idiot. 73 important messages were sitting there unbeknownst for over 3 years–your situation may be similar.
The “other” folder is a message bin (like a trash receptacle) for people who are not already your friend. You do not get a notification. Messages may be anything from spam to dear old friends trying to reconnect. For females, many messages will be clear come-ons. If you teach e-publishing, like me, most of these messages will be sincere questions from readers who bought your books, have a question and deserve a reply.
For many Facebook users, the “other” folder is where years of unseen emails exist. Being ignorant of this file is extremely common even with people who consider themselves somewhat “tech savvy.”
Duh, why don’t you just turn on the Settings to get Notified when someone who isn’t already a friend contacts you? Great question. It doesn’t appear possible as I’ve been pulling hair out on FB trying to do just that. There exists Basic and Strict filtering but no user-friendly control to get notified when non-friends leave a message. From FB help center: Typically, messages from other people will go to your Other folder, and you won’t receive a notification about them. (haha, and there’s nothing you can do about it either!)
At least there’s nothing that I know of. Perhaps some tech savvy responses will show a solution in the comments.
Long story short–check your “other” folder once a week until Facebook writes a few lines of programming code to fix this current and perplexing situation.
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