Chapter 1

The Many Faces of Facebook

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding Facebook

Knowing what you can and can't do on Facebook

Finding out how Facebook is different from other social sites

Seeing how different people use Facebook differently

Think about the people you interacted with throughout the past day. In the morning, you may have gone outside to get the paper and chatted with a neighbor. You may have asked your kids what time they'd be home and negotiated with your partner about whose turn it is to cook dinner. Perhaps you spent the day at the office, chatting, joking, and (heaven forbid) getting things done with your co-workers. In the midst of it all, you may have sent an email to all the people in your book club, asking them what book should be next and what date works for the most people. Maybe while you sat on the bus you read the newspaper or called your mom to wish her a happy birthday or searched on your phone for a good restaurant to go to for drinks with friends. This is your world, as it revolves around you.

Each of us has our own version of the world, and as we interact with each other, those worlds intertwine, interplay, and interlock. Maybe your best friend from college was the one to introduce you to the book club, and then someone from the book club recommended a good restaurant. This network of people you interact with - your friends, acquaintances, and loved ones - exists online. Facebook is the online representation of the web of connections between people in the real world.

Now, you may be asking, if this network exists in the real world, why do I need it online, too? Good question (gold stars all around). The answer is that having this network online facilitates and improves all your social relationships. In other words, Facebook makes your life easier and your friendships better. It can help with practical things such as remembering a friend's birthday or coordinating a party. It can help also with the more abstract aspects of relationships, things like staying close with family you aren't physically near or talking about your day with friends.

Getting set up and familiar with Facebook does take a little work (which you know, or else you wouldn't be starting on this book-length journey). It may feel a little overwhelming at times, but the reward is worth it - we promise you.

So What Is Facebook, Exactly?

"Yes," you're saying. "I know Facebook is going to help me stay in touch with my friends and communicate with the people in my life, but what is it?"

Well, at its most basic, Facebook is a website. You'll find it through a web browser such as Safari, Google Chrome, or Firefox, the same way you might navigate to a search engine like Google or to an airline's website to book tickets. (You can also access it using an app on your smartphone or tablet, but more on Facebook Mobile in Chapter 7.) Figure 1-1 shows what you will probably see when you navigate to www.facebook.com.

FIGURE 1-1: Welcome to Facebook.

If you're already a Facebook user and choose to stay logged in to your computer, www.facebook.com will likely look more like Figure 1-2, which shows an example of your News Feed and Home page.

FIGURE 1-2: Welcome back to Facebook, old friend.

Facebook is a website where you go to connect and share with friends. And just as there are a lot of different ways you interact with friends in the real world, there are a lot of ways to do so on Facebook. For example, you may go to Facebook to

• Check out what your friends are up to today.
• Read articles and other news that your friends have posted.
• Tell your friends and family about your recent successes, show them your photos, or let them know you're thinking of them.
• Share a tidbit from your day, something you've been thinking about, or an article you found interesting.
• Show off the pictures from your latest vacation.
• Share a live video of a concert, an event, or whatever is going on right now.
• Make a contact in a city you're moving to or at a company where you're applying for a job.
• Plan an event.
• Get in touch with an old friend.
• Garner support for a cause.
• Buy or sell used items.
• Get recommendations from friends for movies, books, music, and restaurants.
• Create a special dating profile and find a date.
• Remember everyone's birthday.

So what Facebook is, exactly, is a website built to help you represent yourself online and share with your real-world friends online. The rest of it - how that's accomplished, what people typically share on Facebook, and how it all works - is what this book is all about.

Discovering What You Can Do on Facebook

Now that you know that Facebook is a means by which you can connect with people who matter to you, your next question may be, "How?" Another gold star for you! In the next few sections, you receive an overview.

Connecting with friends

As soon as you sign up for Facebook, you'll start seeing prompts to "Add Friends." Friendships are the digital connections between you and your real-world friends and acquaintances. On Facebook, friending just means establishing a virtual connection. Friending people enables you to communicate and share with them more easily. Friends are basically the reason Facebook can be so powerful and useful to people. Facebook offers the following tools to help you find your friends:

• People You May Know: Displays the names and pictures of people you likely know. These people are selected for you based on commonalities such as where you live or work or how many friends you have in common.
• Search: Helps you find the people in your life by name. Chances are they are already using Facebook.

After you establish a few friendships on Facebook, use those friendships to find other people you know by searching through their connections for familiar names. Chapter 8 explains how to find people you know on Facebook.

Discovering what's going on with your friends

Whenever you log into Facebook, you'll see your News Feed. News Feed is the constantly updating list of stories by and about your friends. In less vague terms, every time one of your friends adds something to Facebook - a photo, a post about her day, a link to an article he liked - it creates a story that may appear when you log in. In this way, your News Feed becomes an ongoing update about your friends. News Feed is how you know when your friends have become engaged, moved, or had a baby. It's how you know who had a funny thought while waiting for coffee, and whose kid just said something bizarre and profound. It's how you know that there was a tiny earthquake in your area ten minutes ago (don't worry, everyone's fine) and that people were disappointed by the way your city's basketball team played over the weekend. You can see a snippet of a News Feed in Figure 1-2. Chapter 4 provides much more detail about News Feed.

Establishing a timeline

When you sign up for Facebook, one of the first things you do is establish your profile, or timeline. Facebook (and your authors) use these terms interchangeably. On Facebook, a profile is much much more than an at-a-glance bio; it updates every time you add something to Facebook, creating an ongoing history of your life on Facebook. When you (or your friends) are feeling nostalgic, you can explore your history the same way you might flip through an old photo album.

At first, the thought of putting a photo album of your entire life online may feel scary or daunting. After all, that stuff is personal. But one of the things you'll discover about Facebook is that it's a place to be personal. The people who will see your timeline are, for the most part, the people you'd show a photo album to in real life. They are your friends and family members.

That "for the most part" is an important part of Facebook, too. You'll encounter other people on Facebook, including potential employers or professional contacts, more distant friends, and casual acquaintances. This distinction - between your close friends and everyone else - is an important one to be aware of.

The timeline, which is shown in Figure 1-3, is set up with all kinds of privacy controls to specify whom you want to see which information. The safest rule here is to share on your timeline any piece of information you'd share with someone in real life. The corollary applies, too: Don't share on your timeline any information that you wouldn't share with someone in real life.

FIGURE 1-3: An example of a Facebook timeline.

Chapter 5 provides lots of detail about the timeline and what you might choose to share there. For now, think of it as a personal web page that helps you share with your friends on Facebook.

Communicating with Facebook friends

As Facebook grows, it becomes more likely that anyone with whom...