a reunion
Thanks to life’s curveballs, friends at a given time may not be the people in your life at another. The memories of people you consider to be most important fade over the years so that even trying to recall a last name may give you pause. The primary reason for this lapse is a legitimate one: There are only so many hours in a day. While we make new, close friends, others drift away because it’s impossible to maintain many intense relationships. Facebook hasn’t yet found a way to extend the number of hours in a day, so it can’t fix the problem of growing apart. However, Facebook can lessen the finality and inevitability of the distance.
Because Facebook is only about 17 years old (and because you’re reading this book), you probably don’t have your entire social history mapped out. Some may find it a daunting task to create connections with everyone they’ve ever known, which we don’t recommend. Instead, build your map as you need to or as opportunity presents. Perhaps you want to upload a photo taken from your high school graduation. Search for the people in the photo on Facebook; form the friend connection; and then tag, or mark, them as being in the photo. (You can learn about photo tagging in Chapter 11.) Maybe you’re thinking about opening a restaurant, and you’d like to contact a friend from college who was headed into the restaurant business after graduation. Perhaps you never told your true feelings to the one who got away. For all these reasons, you may find yourself using the Facebook search box.
Finding a happily ever after
Sometimes after hearing a description of Facebook, people worry that it’s some sort of dating site. No, no, no, we always reassure them, it’s definitely not a dating site … except if you want it to be. Facebook Dating is a separate part of the site that people looking for love can opt into. You set up a separate profile for the dating portion of Facebook, but then Facebook uses information about the sorts of groups you’ve joined and events you’ve attended to find matches based on your interests. Everything that happens on Facebook Dating stays inside Facebook Dating — your messages with potential matches, your profile, their profiles, and so on. It might just be where you find the one.
Entertaining yourself and playing games
Look, keeping up with friends is great, but lots of people log in to Facebook simply to be entertained. Facebook uses cues from friends to try and find the videos that are most likely to be of interest to you. Additionally, Facebook produces original content that can be found in a section of the site called Facebook Watch. If you enjoy gaming and watching livestreams of esports, there are also lots of ways to have that itch scratched in the Gaming sections of Facebook. You can learn more about gaming in Chapter 15.
Communicating in times of trouble
It's a sad fact of life that sometimes events happen beyond our control. Disasters great and small befall everyone at one time or another. While Facebook tends to be a place for sharing the good stuff, its tools also work very well to help with some of the logistics of recovering from certain types of disasters. Safety Check is a feature that gets turned on in certain geographic regions after natural disasters or security attacks. This feature allows people to easily notify their wider Facebook community that they are okay and can even help them coordinate with the services they might need. Facebook’s Groups feature was used to help coordinate civilian boat evacuations after a hurricane flooded Houston, Texas, in 2017. Because people live so much of their lives on Facebook, Facebook winds up being there for both the good and the bad.
Chapter 2
Adding Your Face
IN THIS CHAPTER
Chapter 1 covers why you might want to join Facebook. In this chapter, you find out how to sign up for Facebook and begin using the site. Keep a few things in mind when you sign up. First, Facebook is exponentially more useful and more fun when you start adding friends. Without friends, it can feel kind of dull. Second, your friends may take a few days to respond to your friend requests, so be patient. Even if your first time on Facebook isn’t as exciting as you'd hoped, try again over the following weeks. Third, you can have only one personal account on Facebook. Facebook links accounts to email addresses or mobile numbers, and your email address (or number) can be linked to only one account. This system enforces a world where people are who they say they are on Facebook.
Signing Up for Facebook
Officially, all you need to join Facebook is a valid email address or valid mobile number. When we say valid email, we mean that you need to easily access the messages in that account because Facebook emails you a registration confirmation. A valid mobile number means a mobile phone number that can send and receive text messages, because Facebook will text you your registration confirmation. Figure 2-1 shows the crucial part of the sign-up page, which you can find by navigating to www.facebook.com.
As you can see, you need to fill out a few things:
First and Last Name: Facebook is a place based on real identity. Sign up with the name people know you by. We don’t recommend signing up with a fake name or alias because that will make it hard for your friends to find you on the site. After you’ve signed up, you can add nicknames or maiden names to your timeline to make it even easier for friends to find you. But for now, just use your real first and last name.
Mobile Number or Email: You need to enter your valid email address or mobile phone number here. If you enter your email, you'll need to do so twice to make sure there are no typos.
New Password: As with all passwords, using a combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks is a good idea for your Facebook password. It’s probably not a good idea to use the same password for every site you join, so we recommend using something unique for Facebook. Facebook requires passwords to be at least six characters.
Birthday: Enter your date of birth. If you’re shy about sharing your birthday, don’t worry: You’ll be able to hide this information on your timeline later.
Gender (Female, Male, or Custom): Facebook uses your gender information to construct sentences about you on the site. For example, you might see a News Feed story that reads “Amy updated her profile picture.” Your gender options are Female, Male, or Custom. You must choose one. If you choose Custom, you'll see a drop-down menu to select your preferred pronoun. Your options are she/her, he/him, or they/them. Your pronoun will be visible to everyone on Facebook, and Facebook will use it to construct sentences about you. In the text field below the pronoun menu, you can enter your gender separately if it differs from
