November 20, 2008

Facebook www.facebook.com is pretty easy and a lot of fun. Think of High School and yearbooks: you can trade notes, connect with others, and keep abreast of new developments in your friends’ lives. It’s particularly good for finding people with whom you haven’t connected in a long time. I’ve been looking for some of my elementary and middle school classmates for years, and finally a lot of them joined Facebook. Some of them are now turning into business associates and partners, which is an added benefit if you’re looking to expand your network.

I’m providing an brief introduction to Facebook and my top ten must-do items for dealing with the inevitable amounts of time you’ll be spending on the site. As in any other social networking tool, this is primarily a great way to keep in contact with people in your life and I encourage you to treat your profile like you mind any other property, brochure, or branding message of yours. 

On Facebook you have a “profile” which includes things like your “Wall”, some “Info” about you, “Photos” if you choose to share them, and a bunch of other tabs which you may use as you wish.

What I recommend is that you treat your Facebook page like any other social networking tool: keep it as professional or as personal as you like and realize that most of the information is publicly accessible, so mind your manners and respect yourself and others. Images, links, videos, and news items are all available through Facebook: post ones that you feel are most appropriate to you. Also look for the people you remember from years ago: there’s a good chance some of them are either online with Facebook or will be joining soon. Happy Facebooking!

Monica’s Top Ten Quick Tips for Facebook:

1) You’ll have to log in if you want to be a part of Facebook. Choose an e-mail you actually check and use a password that’s something you can remember. 

When you log in, there is a *LOT* of information, but your main task is to organize your profile and then connect (or “add as friend”) people who are already on Facebook. Typically you have followed someone’s link to join.

Once you’re logged in, you can organize your information.

2) Go to the top right: Settings (next to Logout) and change your PRIVACY Settings, particularly your Profile (your “presence” on Facebook)

www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=profile

as well as your News Feed and Wall

www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=feeds

3) Edit your Education Info and/or Work Info as you like.

4) Update your Profile Picture with something that you feel best represents you: for most people it’s a picture of them either as an individual or with others.

5) School classmates: Next you go to: www.facebook.com/srch.php and do a personal search (by a person’s name or e-mail address), a Classmate Search (by name of high school and year of graduation), or a company search.  Once you get some search results, review them and you may click “Add as Friend” to your friends. They get a notification and either Confirm or Ignore your request to add them.

6) There is also a “Friend Finder” helps you find people you e-mail or some suggested friends, if you’d like to use your gmail, hotmail, yahoo, or other web-based mail service to find others.

www.facebook.com/findfriends.php?ref=sb

7) The “Wall” is just a publicly available “wall” where people post things like notes, images, videos, etc. Anything on your wall is PUBLICLY AVAILABLE to anyone who you specify in your Privacy settings, so use your own best judgement.

8) There is a “Share button” typically somewhere on the pages within Facebook. You can use that “Share” link, and eventually a Share button you may add to your browser toolbar, to quickly post something to your own “Wall” or send to someone via Facebook e-mail.

9) Facebook has a lot of picture uploads, you can easily upload photos using your “Photos” tab.

10) Finally, a note on applications. These will be things where you get an invitation to do something. Be CAREFUL and use your best judgement about installing applications as they are

a) big time wasters (I mean commitments). I usually click IGNORE this application… 

and b) they share your private information on Facebook with other applications from other website developers

So with all things, be mindful of what gets posted on your profile by you and by others.

For ongoing use, you use the site to “update your status” if you’d like: this publishes your current status to a “feed” that your friends may review: it’s a great tool for sharing information, links, or what’s on your mind.

Whenever you click on “Home” it brings you to a page that has all the latest information from your friends including *their* status updates as well as their posted items, invitations to games and other social things that they send, links, videos, and even a mailbox with e-mailed messages sent through Facebook.

As you become more and more familiar with the layout, you’ll start to recognize things like Requests, Applications, Events, Birthdays, and other things like ads and games.