How to Turn Your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ Profiles Into a Reading List

Social media is all about sharing. Whether it’s breaking news, an interesting photo, or a long, well-written feature, there’s a good chance you first saw it on a social networking site. Sometimes you might like a photo on Facebook but forget to read the story, or you might be overwhelmed by the volume of tweets and unable to read the article. If you encounter these problems, here are some solutions to turn your profile into a reading list.

Facebook
Your Facebook newsfeed can get very cluttered, depending on how many friends you have and the pages you like. To create a quick reading list from it, you can use Facebook’s Save feature. Note that Facebook recently started rolling out the Save feature, so it may be a while before you can use it. Here’s how.

1. Log in to Facebook > Scroll down to any post in News Feed > Click the “Save” button in the bottom right corner.
2. You can also click the small down arrow button in the upper right corner of each post > click Save.
3. You can also save Facebook pages. For example, go to the NDTV Gadgets Facebook page > click the three dots next to the “Share” button on the cover photo > Save.
4. You can view all your saved posts in the “Saved” link under “Events” on the left side of your news feed.
5. Facebook is nicely categorized into tabs for movies, links, etc. If you want to delete something you’ve saved, just click the little “x” next to the saved item. This will push it to the Archives tab. Go there > click on the three dots > Delete. At the same location, you can click Unarchive to push the item back to Saved.

This feature doesn’t solve the problem of finding articles you liked but forgot to read. If you’re willing to let third-party apps access your Facebook profile, you can try LikeManager. Here’s how to use it.

1. Open LikeManager > Click “Sign up for free with Facebook” > Let the application access your Facebook profile.
2. Now that you’re signed up, you’ll see all your past favorites in neat tiles. You can scroll down to see all the posts you like.
3. To find content you like, use the search bar at the top. LikeManager also sorts your preferences into various categories such as Videos, Movies & TV, Shopping, and more. Click on a specific category to see content you like. This is useful, for example, if you remember something you liked about a movie, but not which movie it was. We found the ranking to be quite accurate.
4. Under these categories, you’ll see tabs for “All Likes,” “Likes on Friends’ Posts,” “My Shared Links,” and “Likes Outside of Facebook.” These are self-describing categories and work as advertised.

twitter
Twitter is a great place to find new articles, but it’s not easy to eliminate all distractions and just focus on the article. The New York Times has a great solution to this problem called Kraft Paper. Here’s how to use it.

Open the Vellum website > click “Sign up with Twitter”.

1. You will now see the title and, in some cases, a short summary of the shared article on your timeline. If you want to see the original tweet, click on the profile picture to the right of each caption.
2. While Vellum lacks simple options for sorting or searching articles, it does group multiple tweets for the same article. The drop-down menu at the top lets you view articles from your timeline or any lists you’ve created.

If you’re on iOS or Mac, all you need to do Vellum is Apple’s Safari browser. Here’s how:

1. On iOS, open Settings > Twitter > Add Account > Enter your username and password > Sign In.
2. Open Safari > Click on the book icon > Click on the @ tab at the top.
3. Here, you’ll only see tweets with links shared on your Twitter feed.
4. On Safari for Mac OS X Mavericks, open System Preferences > Internet Accounts > Sign in to Twitter and LinkedIn.
5. Open Safari > click the book icon in the upper left corner > Share link.

On OS X Mavericks, Safari shared links support Twitter and LinkedIn. Therefore, you will be able to view posts with links from both social networks here.

Google+
If you do most of your reading on Google+, there’s a simple trick to making a quick reading list on the social network.

1. Open Google+ circles > Sign in > Click on the + icon to create a new circle > Do not add anyone to the circle > Click on Create an empty circle. You might want to name this circle “Reading List.”
2. Now, whenever you share an article on Google+, just share it with your reading list circles. These articles are invisible to anyone but you, and the circle can act as your reading list.
3. If this method seems too complicated, you can simply +1 any articles you like and they will be visible under the +1 section on your profile page.
4. You can do this by going to Google+ settings > scroll down to your profile > make sure the box next to +1 is unchecked. This will keep the +1 section of your profile private.

read later app
The best solution for making a reading list is to try a read-later app like Pocket or Instapaper. We prefer Pocket because it works on all platforms, is easy to use, integrates with multiple apps like Tweetbot, Flipboard and Feedly, has no ads, and of course – it looks good too. Here’s how to set it up.

1. Open the Pocket website > click Sign up now > Create account.
2. Pocket is available on iOS, Android, the web, and as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Select the platform of your choice and install the app/extension.
3. Pocket adds a button to your browser so you can quickly save any web page. All you have to do is click the Pocket button and the service saves the article for offline reading.
4. To view all saved web pages, go to Pocket Website > Sign In.
5. Pocket’s Android and iOS apps download your saved articles so you can read them without the Internet. Just download the app and log in. If you need help saving articles and posts, visit Pocket’s website.

If this tutorial was helpful, there’s more in our “How To” section. If we missed your favorite way to turn your social network into a reading list, or if you’d like to share how you do it, leave a comment below.