Project #1: A Beginner's Guide to Facebook

1. Go to www.facebook.com, type your info into the blue box at right, and check your email.


2. Facebook will automatically give you a list of people who've requested to friend your email address. Assuming you know all those jokers, approve them. It will then ask you some more information about yourself, and assuming you want ex-classmates and so forth to be able to find you, fill it out. You can skip any of these steps, but having your University as your primary network is standard (as most of us joined then), and you can also use your current town, hometown or current employer as a secondary network (that one varies more).


3. Facebook will now take you to its homepage. Any recent activity by anyone you're friends with or general announcements are displayed chronologically here (there's probably not much there yet, but eventually there will be way more than you want to know). You can edit your settings to minimize notices you don't care about, and don't worry, you can hide your own actions so that they won't appear on your friends' pages.


4. You should probably put some info in your profile right away. Most of the categories are pretty self-explanatory, you'll just have to peruse your friends' profiles to get a good feeling for the style, which is mostly list form but does vary. My general rule is anything i'd tell to anyone i know is okay to put up there, and i've attempted to have a minimalistic profile (and totally failed). i prefer it when people put in their contact info, as i have lost my phone before and used facebook as a good emergency backup, but you can always leave any space blank. A lot of people also put in their real addresses or websites, but i think that's unnecessary.

As for photo, i tend to go cute/contemporary Sarah as much as possible, though currently you'll see i have an awesome shot of the 4-year-old-me. Some people put up images of things, brands, or famous people they like (or heavily photoshopped versions of themselves) but i tend to think that's silly (and having only clipart from one's favorite manga is pretty much saying 'i think i'm funny looking' to the entire internet, as the photo is the one thing everybody can see without friending you).


5. Search for and friend a few people already! The great advantage of Facebook is that if you know someone's name (and it's not John Smith), you can find them.


6. The Wall!
The Wall started, in the weeeee early days of facebook, as the first app: an ongoing annoymous commentary postable-ed-on by anyone you knew, thus leading to amazing amounts of drama. Luckily for you late-comers to the scene, it's now a bit more organized, as it shows who-said-what-when, and you can easily hit reply and post back on your posters' wall; providing a nice, ongoing conversational record. (Your first few posts will probably be expressing sheer surprise that you finally joined, as well as somebody being terribly excited that they broke your facebook cherry.)


7. Now you can add applications!
Facebook automatically comes with Events, Gifts, Groups, Notes, Photos, Posted Items and Video. You will probably use all of these except for Gifts, (which costs $1/gift sent, so is stupid... but it doesn't have ads is why). i deleted it, and if you really feel the need to send funny pictures to your friends' profiles, Bumper Sticker is a good replacement. Anyway, the other six are useful (Events is probably why you're joining at all), and as your friends post things, you'll get familiar with them. They all have explanations if you click on 'Applications' on the left side of your page, and you can always ask me if you have questions (some have had bugs and randomly don't work).

Photos are the best (or the worst, depending how you look at it), and i tend to spend a lot of time posting/editing them and looking at everybody else's (i'm sure you'll see yourself in there already!). Any incriminating (or funny looking) photos can always be untagged.

As for other applications, my favorites are GoodReads and Places I've Been. In my effort to not have a crazy-cluttered profile, i've deleted pretty much everything else except these two near-essentials. GoodReads you know, and Places I've Been does pretty much the same for Geography: shows places one has lived/traveled or wants to travel to. The best way to add apps is to wait & see which ones your friends actually use--as there's hundreds to choose from, and it's really not worth the time to go through them all.

The most aggravating thing about the apps is that you really can't tell what they are until after you add them, and who really bothers to delete everything they don't use? But there are a few novelty apps that i've found fun: Slayers/Vampires/Zombies and (fluff)Friends among them--which are pretty self-explanatory and probably not too appealing--but the point is that no matter what the interest or social sub-group, there's an app for it, and some of them are pretty entertaining (The Oregon Trail one & Dope Wars are especially popular). Don't add superwall or funwall, they're annoying (chain letters) and redundant (the normal wall fulfills the same purpose better), or any of the quizzes (honestly? why are those even on there?). Also, when people use apps, they will quite often send you a link to join it, which you will see on the right of the homepage under 'Requests.' Any that you don't want, just hit 'block application' right away, otherwise your in-box will overflow (myne is seriously overflowing... i currently have 96 requests for (Lil)Green Patch).


8. The most notable groups you should be in are the Fermata one, the Geology one created by our very own Angie, Chuck Norris Facts, and my wonderous brainchild. Oh, and the BEST GROUP EVER, of course! Other than that, you'll get invited as it goes along. Also, a lot of groups aren't terribly active (as you'll see from the dates), so i tend to not join too many... but there is a 300-group limit, just so you know.


9. Sit back and know you've made the right choice as far as online social-network-tools are concerned. Facebook is inifinitely better than MySpace, and not just because you're over 15: it's searchable, it has much less ads, its photos are integrated, it has a lot of users (so anyone you should be keeping in touch with and haven't is probably on there) and Mark is way, way cooler than Tom . There have been some criticisms, but overall Facebook does exactly what it says it'll do and more: it connects you to the people around you, and eats up all your free time in the process.

Yay you're not a luddite anymore!