and creating groups
Facebook Groups are also what they sound like: groups of people organized around a common topic or real-world organization. One group may be intimate, such as five best friends who plan several activities together. Another group could be practical — for example, PTA Members of Denver Schools. Within a group, all members can share relevant information, photos, or discussions. Carolyn’s groups include one for each kid’s classroom at school, one for her For Dummies editorial team to update how the writing is going, one for women who like hiking and camping in the Pacific Northwest, and one Buy Nothing group for passing along used items with others in her neighborhood. Groups are covered in detail in Chapter 10.
Whenever you share content on Facebook, you can choose to share it only with members of a certain group. So if you just had a baby and know how much your family is jonesing for new photos, you can share photos with just your family group without inundating the world at large.
Using Facebook around the Internet
Facebook Photos, Groups, and Events are only a small sampling of how you can use Facebook to connect with the people you know. Throughout this book, you find information about how Facebook interacts with the greater Internet. You might see articles recommended by friends when you go to The New York Times website or information about what music your friends like when you use Spotify, an Internet radio website. Chapter 15 explains in detail the games, apps, and websites that you can use with your Facebook information.
Many of these websites and applications have been built by outside developers who don’t work for Facebook. They include tools to help you edit your photos; create slideshows; play games with friends across the globe; divvy up bills among people who live or hang out together; and exchange information about good movies, music, books, and restaurants. After you become a little more comfortable with the Facebook basics, you can try some of the thousands of applications and websites whose services allow you to interact with your Facebook friends.
Promoting a business
Every day, you interact with your friends and family. You also interact with other people, places and things: a newspaper or magazine, your favorite coffee shop, a celebrity whose marriage travails you can’t help but be fascinated by, a television show that has you on the edge of your seat, or a cause that’s near and dear to your heart. All these entities can be represented on Facebook through Pages (with a capital P). These Pages look almost exactly like timelines, just for the not-quite-people among us. Instead of becoming friends with Pages, you can like (or follow) them. So when you like a television show (say, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah), you’ll start to see updates from that Page (The Daily Show) in your News Feed. Liking Pages for businesses or causes helps you stay up-to-date with news from them. Chapter 14 covers the ins and outs of Pages.
Fundraising for a cause
One of the things people often do in the world is try to figure out a way to make it better. Every day, people are working on solving lots of hard problems. Facebook fits into this because it can help you spread the word to friends about the causes you're passionate about. And if your friends care about the same things, they in turn might bring along their friends to create a large group of people willing to help out. In addition to simply passing along information, you can create fundraisers where your friends help you reach a charitable goal. Fundraisers are covered in Chapter 12.
THE BIRTH OF THE ’BOOK
In ye olden days, say, the early 2000s, most college freshmen would receive a thinly bound book containing the names and faces of everyone in their matriculating class. These face books were useful for matching names to the students seen around campus or for pointing out particular people to friends. However, these face books had several problems. If someone didn’t send in his picture, the books were incomplete. They were outdated by junior year because many people looked drastically different, and the books didn’t reflect the students who had transferred in or who were from any other class. Finally, they had little information about each person.
In February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, a sophomore at Harvard, launched an online “book” to which people could upload their photos and personal information, a service that solved many of these problems. Within a month, more than half of the Harvard undergraduates had signed up.
Zuckerberg was then joined by others to help expand the site into other schools. Carolyn was the first Stanford student to receive an account. During the summer of the same year, Facebook moved to Palo Alto, California, where the site and the company kept growing. By December 2004, the site had grown to one million college students. Every time Facebook opened to a new demographic — high school, then work users, then everyone — the rate at which people joined the site continued to increase.
At the end of 2006, the site had more than 10 million users; 2007 closed out with more than 50 million active users. At the time of this book’s publication in 2021, that final count has grown so that now more than two and a half billion people across the globe use Facebook to stay in touch.
Keeping in Mind What You Can’t Do on Facebook
Facebook is meant to represent real people and real associations; it’s also meant to be safe. Many of the rules of participation on Facebook exist to uphold those two goals.
You can’t lie
Okay, you can, but you shouldn't, especially not about your basic information. Facebook’s community standards include a commitment to use an authentic identity, which means Facebook wants you to create only one timeline for yourself. You don’t have to use your real name, but we recommend that you do. (A few exceptions to this rule include teachers wanting to keep some professional distance from their students by using an alias.) However, if you create multiple accounts or fake accounts, there's a good chance they will be flagged, disabled, and removed from Facebook.
You can’t be 12 or younger
Seriously. A U.S. law prohibits minors under the age of 13 from creating an online timeline for themselves. This rule, which Facebook enforces, is in place for the safety of minors. If you or someone you know on Facebook is under 13, deactivate (or make him or her deactivate) the account now. If you’re reported to the Facebook Community Operations team and they confirm that you’re underage, your account will be disabled.
You can’t troll, spam, or harass
On the Internet, trolling refers to posting deliberately
