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.
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 you’re trying to communicate can be reached. Chances are you’ll be able to find that person you just met at a dinner party, an old professor from college, or the childhood friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with. Digging up a person’s contact information could require calls to mutual friends, a trip to the white pages (provided you know enough about that person to identify the right contact information), or an email sent to a potentially outdated email address. Facebook streamlines finding and contacting people in one place. If the friend you’re reaching out to is active on Facebook, no matter where she lives or how many times she’s changed her email address, you can reach each other.
And Facebook isn’t just about looking up old friends to say hi. Its messaging system is designed to make it easy to dash off a quick note to friends and get their reply just as fast. The comments people leave on each other’s photos, status updates, and posts are real conversations that you will find yourself taking part in.
Sharing your thoughts
You have something to say. We can just tell by the look on your face. Maybe you’re proud of the home team, or you’re excited for Friday, or you can’t believe what you saw on the way to work this morning. All day long, things are happening to all of us that make us just want to turn to our friends and say, “You know what? … That’s what.” Facebook gives you the stage and an eager audience. Chapter 4 shows how you can make short or long posts about the things happening around you and how to distribute those posts easily to your friends.
Sharing your pictures and videos
Since the invention of the modern-day camera, people have been all too eager to yell, “Cheese!” Photographs can make great tour guides on trips down memory lane — but only if you remember to develop, upload, or scrapbook them. Many memories fade when the smiling faces are stuffed into an old shoe box, remain on undeveloped rolls of film, or are left to molder in obscurity on your phone’s camera roll.
Facebook offers three great incentives for uploading, organizing, and editing your photos and videos:
Facebook provides one easy-to-access location for all your photos and videos. Directing any interested person to your Facebook timeline is easier than emailing pictures individually, sending a complicated link to a photo site, or waiting until the family reunion to show off the my-how-the-kids-have-grown pics. You can share videos alongside your photos, so people can really get a feel for all parts of your vacation.
Every photo and video you upload can be linked to the timelines of the people in the photo or video. For example, suppose you upload pictures of you and your sister and link them to her timeline. On Facebook, this is called tagging someone. Whenever someone visits your sister’s timeline, he sees those pictures; he doesn’t even have to know you. This feature is great because it introduces longevity to photos. As long as people are visiting your sister’s timeline, they can see those pictures. Photo albums no longer have to be something people look at right after the event and maybe again years later. Friends may have certain settings that prevent you from tagging them in photos. In general, people leave this feature turned on, but if you’re trying to tag someone and can’t, this might be why.
Facebook gives you the power to control exactly who has access to your photos and videos. Every time you upload a photo or create a new photo album on Facebook, you can decide whether who you want to see it: everyone on Facebook, just your friends, or a subset of your friends based on your comfort level. You may choose to show your wedding photos to all your friends, but those of the honeymoon to only a few friends. This control enables you to tailor your audience to those friends who might be most interested. All your friends might enjoy your baby photos, but maybe only your co-workers will care about photos from the recent company party.
Chapter 11 shows how to share your photos and videos.
Planning events
The Facebook Events feature is just what it sounds like: a system for creating events, inviting people to them, sending out messages about them, and so on. Your friends and other guests RSVP to events, which allows the event organizers to plan accordingly and allows attendees to receive event reminders. Facebook Events can be used for something as small as a lunch date or as big as a march on Washington, D.C. Sometimes events are abstract rather than physical. For example, someone could create an event for Ride Your Bike to Work Day and hope the invitation spreads far and wide (through friends and friends of friends) to promote awareness. You can use Events to plan barbecues for friends as well as to put together a large reading series. Chapter 13 covers Events in detail.
