Facebook only notifies you about messages from your friends, which means you have a whole separate inbox of messages from pages you like and people on Facebook you aren’t yet friends with. Here’s how to make sure you haven’t missed anything important.
Some of you may have noticed this, others not — and we thought it was important to make sure everyone had seen this. Facebook, apparently, decides not to send you notifications of messages from non-friend sources. That means if someone who isn’t a friend attempts to contact you, or if one of your “Liked” pages sends out an update, you won’t get a notification — you’ll only see it if you head to this “second inbox” manually.
To access it, click on the “Messages” button on the left-hand side of your Facebook home page. From there, you should see a sub-option — called “Other” — pop up under Messages. Click that to see your other messages. As you can see in the screenshot above, it’s usually unimportant mass messages from fan pages, but not always. Slate writer Elizabeth Weingarten, for example, missed a few messages that were rather urgent:
On Nov. 15 at approximately 11:45 p.m., I left my 1-month-old MacBook Air in the back of a New York City cab. Quickly realising my error, I freaked out: Hands shaking, I dialed the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, reported the cab’s medallion number (I had a receipt) and jotted down the phone number of city precincts where my cargo could end up (if a good Samaritan turned it in). Then, I slumped against the side of a building and sobbed.
[Nearly a month later], a colleague at Slate sent an email around about the messages Facebook hides in an obscure folder labelled “Other” . . . When I [checked it], I inhaled sharply: A man had sent me four very important messages: two on Nov. 16, one on the 17th, and another on the 18th. . . “Dear Elizabeth, I found your laptop in a taxi. Please call me at xxxxxxxxx.”
Unfortunately, there’s no way to change this lack-of-notifying behaviour on Facebook. It’s annoying that this isn’t an option — especially when Facebook doesn’t do a very good job of separating “important” from “unimportant” — but for now, all you can do is remember to check this “Other” inbox regularly. Hit the link to read more.
Furious at Facebook Again! [Slate]
sjc
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 12:30 PMI had thought this inbox was only for messages from pages I liked – wrong! Three messages in mine from over the last 3 months that I missed out on (luckily one was only last week), because I wasn’t yet friends with the sender.
Drew
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 12:40 PMJoin us again tomorrow when we discuss “How to breathe, without drowning”
Grayda
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 12:45 PMI now check this on a regular basis in case someone is messaging me about photos to buy and such. Almost missed out on a $300 sale the other month >_>
Ron
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 2:28 PMThanks for Highlight…. Nice to know its there – two spam which I clicked Option and Report as Spam….
Tara G
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 3:45 PMI had someone with the same surname as me ask if I was related to them. Didn’t see the message until months later, by which point she had sent me another 10 messages, each one nastier than the next, telling me what a horrible person I was etc etc. Anyway, by the time I found the messages I was quite pleased to discover I wasn’t related to her after all!
Drew
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 4:41 PMOh Tara, what a horrible thing you did to her… =)
Tara G
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 5:33 PMOh noes, I didn’t check my facebook inbox I didn’t even know I had! :-S Yet another reason I’m happy I quit facebook.
Frank
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 7:23 PMGood call. I only found this by accident recently. Three valuable messages in there, three, six and nine months old.