Have You Checked Your ‘Other’ Facebook Folder?

Once or twice I’ve wanted to send a Facebook message to someone I technically wasn’t “friends” with. I baulked when I was asked to pay $1 for the privilege. I’m just a little uneasy about giving out payment information on such a public forum. I had email addresses anyway, so I didn’t think anything more of it – or the ‘other’ folder the message would have gone to without the $1 payment.

Have you ever checked your other folder? Do you even know where it is? I found that out today when I ran across a story from Watsonville Patch in California.

After reading the Patch story, I immediately made a concerted effort to find my "other" Facebook folder. I was thoroughly surprised by what I found - a whole lot of messages I had missed since 2010. While much of it was spam, a long lost relative from Ghana who apparently had millions to give me if I could just share my bank account info with him, etc. etc., but there were also messages that I absolutely should have received. One was a long-lost friend from South Africa who I fortunately found myself a couple of months ago. I’m sure she wondered about my excitement in finding her when I had completely ignored hers when she found me about a year or so before. There were also events that I really should have know about – like a Redneck Picnic for Patrick Fenneran, of Loganville, who we lost to leukemia three summers ago.

So if you have been oblivious to that ‘other’ folder like I was, take a few minutes to read these instructions on how to access it and see what treasures you might find. If there is anything special, please share it with us here on Patch. 

Here’s how to locate it, courtesy of Watsonville Patch.

• Go to your messages folder. You can get there from either the side bar of your homepage or the notification window at the top tool bar.
• When that is open, you will see on the top, in fine print, that there are two folders. Inbox and Other. 
• Select “Other” and weed through huge sea of spam and you might find a hidden treasure.  It takes a while to load them all as you scroll down.
• You might also have the sudden realization at this point that messages you have sent to people over the years may not have been ignored. A serious amount of hope could possibly be regained at this very moment.

How can you bypass this feature? Well, you can't. If you want to get in touch with someone, and they don’t answer your message, you might want to consider sending a friend request instead.