This simple guide explains how to easily get on, use and understand FaceBook.
1. What is FaceBook?
FaceBook is a website that allows you to connect and communicate easily with your friends, family and colleagues. You can share you current status, jokes, news articles, photos, videos and links in one place.
If you have not used FaceBook before then you may not understand the benefits so to illustrate I will give an example – Imagine you are travelling through India and you wanted to let people know where you are. You can send all your friends an email. If someone wished to comment on this email then they would have to reply everyone on the email list and if someone wished to reply to this they would have to send another email to everyone and so on. The problem with this is that many people may not want to receive these emails and may not want you to display their email address to other people.
Using FaceBook to is much less intrusive and easier to manage. You post a comment to your wall and your friends will see your update when they log into FaceBook. You can also display you photos, website articles, links, videos etc. The advantage of FaceBook is that you can easily manage all this information and all your communication with your family and friends in one place.
2. Getting started on FaceBook
To get started type www.FaceBook.com into the address bar of your web browser and press the Enter key.
This will bring you to the FaceBook home page. To join FaceBook you must have a valid email address. If you do not have a valid email address you can easily create one at www.gmail.com.
To join you need to fill in the fields under ‘Sign Up’ – indicated by the red rectangle in the image below. When you have filled in these boxes Click on ‘Sign Up’ and your Facebook account will be created.
3. Update Your Profile
You now have a FaceBook account. The first thing to do is to update your profile. You do this by clicking on ‘Profile’ in the the top bar. This allows you to update your profile. You can add as much or as little information as you want to here. If you place your cursor over the image on the left you can add a picture. I recommend adding a picture as otherwise your account looks like it’s not being used. It’s does not have to be a picture of you – some people use sports stars or cartoon characters.
4. Get some Friends
The whole point of the FaceBook experience is to share things with your friends and family. Click on ‘Friends’ in the top toolbar and the click on ‘Find Friends’ from that menu. Follow the onscreen instructions to invite people to become a friend on FaceBook. Remember if you do not want someone to see your updates(e.g. such as your boss) then do not add them as a friend. You can remove them as a friend or block them from seeing you updates but it is much easier not to add them as a friend in the first place.
5. Find Pages of Interest
Many people become a fan of pages like ‘Bed’. While this might seem humourous it is pointless as you will never receive any updates. Much more interesting is to become a fan of a page that reflects your interests. For example if you are a fan of films and become a fan of a page like ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ you will see interesting articles relating to films appearing in your newsfeed. To find a page just type the name into the Search box at the top left or your page and a list of titles will appear. Click on the page to see details and if you like it you can click on ‘Become a Fan’.
6. Viewing content
To view content from your friends and fan pages click on home. Remember if you do not have many friends or pages then you will probably not have many updates to begin with. But these will grow as your friends list grow.
7. ‘Whats on Your Mind?’
In the box at the top of your Home page your will see ‘Whats on your Mind?’. You can type your current status here like ‘Heading to Spain’ or ‘Finishing a great book’. You can also add links to sites, photos, videos. It is important to remember that anything you post here can be seen by all of your friends by default. If you want to say something private to someone then send then a private message. Click on ‘Inbox’ in the top bar and ‘Compose New Message’.
Conclusion
You are now up and running on FaceBook. The experience you have is down to the quality of interaction between you and your friends. An important point to note is that your FaceBook experience is entirely configurable. If you do not want users to see certain items you can change your privacy settings to exclude these items or if you like can remove the person as a friend. If you are receiving too many updates or requests from one person or application you can easily hide these updates.
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