The Facebook Game News Sidebar - Can It Be Turned Off ?

Well Facebook has done it again !!! They have added a new feature to annoy all it's gamer's called Real-time Game News Sidebar. 

This feature gives us in real time news of what our Facebook friends are Supposedly doing right now as far as the games & 3rd party apps. The reason I say supposedly is because it said I was playing a game when I was in bed sleeping and didn't have any games running. So much for real time. 


Now this wouldn't be so bad if they made it directly related to the game we are playing, like Maria needs help in a war, or actually had it about games we actually play BUT NO !!! They include all games & Apps our friends play so now I know that Billy Bob just got the high score on Smurfs & Co. Can You Say DELETE ? LOL 

Now here is the Million Dollar Question, Can It Be Turned Off ? 

The answer is NO !!! 

You cannot remove the new feature form you page. Sorry, Facebook has done this to appease it's money spending developers & marketers to help them get more exposure and try to help them get more players. This was the bone they threw them to stop them from bellyaching about the 30% cut they have to give Facebook on the sales of the virtual items and the fact they cant grow due to the many Facebook restrictions put on them. So it aint going any where. 

So what can you do about this ? Not much, BUT you can remove certain posts by rolling over it and clicking on the X that appears on the far right side of the post. When you do this it will open up a new things as to why you want to remove this post and gives you a choice of answers you can give Facebook as to why you removed the post. . 

You do have the option to help out your friends so they dont see what games you play by going in and editing all the games & apps you use so that only you can see it but lets face it that is not a real solution as 90% of the people wont do that. You can delete all your friends so you see nothing, again not a good solution because you need them to play the games. 

The only viable solution if you really dont want to see it is to, at least for Farmville & Mafia Wars players is to go direct to their site off Facebook and play or unframe the game and then you wont see it. 

I wish I had better news for you about this feature but I dont and no else does so far but if a solution does come out you can bet I will be the first one to share it with you. So for now we have to live with this annoying feature, Sorry.


UPDATE : 


To get rid of the FB Sidebar if you use Chrome save your sanity here now! 
http://trogdorslair.com/addons/hideactivitybar/ Compliments of The Mafia Wars Family AMEX