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Facebook -- sooner or later we'll all join

 

To those who have never tried Facebook: give it a go — the notes below will help you start

To those who “hate” it: I did too, but I hadn’t been able to get past the spammy games and family albums; I didn’t know what lay beyond

To those who are already au fait: click “next” — you don’t need this

To those who can’t believe I’m writing in support of FB: you may have had the same prejudices as me, so maybe read the notes that follow …


The annotated chart, below, of the features you’ll find on your FB home page is a good place to start — click the pic to see it at full screen size.
On the Facebook page, scroll down for close-ups of some sections.
Screenshots that have plus signs in the corner open to yet another close-up.

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In the left sidebar you’re looking at links to your own pages, photos, tabs etc.

The middle section contains a feed of what is being posted by your friends and on the pages and groups you’re subscribed to.
There are two versions of this feed — “Most Recent”, which includes everything as it comes up, ie in real time, and “Top News”, which selects highlights including status updates and items already commented on by others.

The right sidebar can be safely ignored most of the time as it is reserved for ads — although alerts and “suggested” new friends (friends of your friends) are placed there too.

The heart of Facebook is the status update.
Attention seekers should update theirs frequently and perhaps attach photos, links, videos or whatever - though they do risk flooding other people’s feeds and pissing them off that way, much the way overly-prolific Tumblrs hog our dashboards here.

I follow a few funny people though and don’t mind how often they throw something in there.

From the profile tab at the top right of the screen you access your own pages – and by default the Wall, which is what people see when they click on your av.
This is a log of all your recent activity plus whatever others have written on it as a message to you.

Do go though your privacy settings under the “Account” tab at top right – and you will see that you can decide section by section how public you want your personal info, photos and postings to be.
The options are everyone, friends of friends, friends only and a customised option allowing and prohibiting specific people or groups (lists) of people by name.


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Friend Wheel generated in Facebook


Be choosy about games apps and if you find any becoming a nuisance go to the applications settings (again under “Account”) and remove them.
Each app also has a profile page giving background info and updates.
If you subscribe to those pages you will get updates in your news feed as well.


What I have found most rewarding so far though has been just to use the search engine.
Whatever you type in, name, phrase or word, you will get a summary of relevant public pages, groups and people and also any instances where the searched term has come up in recent comments by your friends or on pages you’re subscribed to.

I am not sure that public pages even existed as a feature when I last spent time on FB — 2-3 years ago — but they have become a huge resource.
Now most major websites seem to have set up shop there, and other pages are set up by individuals with a specific interest and links to share.


More practical tips

1)
Whenever you have a website, article, video or whatever on screen and want to share it with friends you can do so instantly with FB.
It is a one-click process if you can see the FB logo on that page or if you’ve installed the Facebook toolbar

http://www.facebook.com/toolbar?v=info

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3794

You can also use a sharing service like Stumbleupon or Shareaholic.


2)
Do read the Help page to get a sense of what FB means by different features …

… because stories are not stories and news is not news as we’ve understood them in the past.


3)
Lastly, you can have Tumblr automatically send all your posts from here to Facebook, and they will go into the feed your friends get and appear on your wall. Mine are also being collected in a tab called “Notes”, which effectively operates as a blog (albeit rather hidden). To set up automatic transfer of your posts from Tumblr to FB, go to “Services” under “Customise” in Tumblr and click on the FB option there - it needs to know the name of your account and permission to access it.

Alternatively, there is also a Tumblr app in FB, which has FB seek permission from Tumblr:
http://www.facebook.com/help/?ref=drop#!/apps/application.php?id=48119224995


~ ~ ~

I do think Facebook has come a long way in the last couple of years.
It would be better if they killed the games though, not cos they’re games but because they work in a viral way and spam your friends with totally inane information with only one purpose in mind – to rope them in as well.

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