On February 4th, 2004, Facebook
was released to the general public. Mark Zuckerberg, who graduated in 2006 from Harvard University, founded Facebook but it was primarily restricted to Harvard students only. It receives its revenue from banner ads and advertising.
As of September 11th, 2006, Facebook was already widely known throughout the world, usually basing its population towards those in high school and colleges or universities. Nowadays, as of October 2007, Facebook has a total of around 42 million users!
This article will guide new Facebook users to learn how to use Facebook, have fun with it, and join the rest of the 42 million who do! By the way, I have Facebook. Therefore, by the end of this article, you should add me. :) My real name is not Nik Fall, by the way.
Basic
First of all, Facebook is a social interactive network that bonds you and your network of friends (or strangers) together. You can check out their lives, and they can check out yours.
The Home Page & News Feed
Firstly, we have the login screen. So make an account and we can get started. Login using your confirmed email address and password. The first window you will see is usually called your Home. At Home, the most part is your News Feed. You can view updates and have a basic overview of what's happening with your friends and their lives. The News Feed loads up every time you login so you won't have to miss anything important.
This, however, might not be true all the time. The News Feed summarizes only some activities that occurred. You can edit the Preferences of what you want your News Feed to display simply by clicking on Preferences. It should be pretty straight forward.
Left Hand Side of Home
In the left-hand corner of Home you will see a search bar. You can type in a friend's name, a stranger's name, or a group name, whatever. Say you wanted to find a co-worker named John X. The search engine will lead you to pages where you have the eligibility of browsing through many John X's in Facebook and also groups, events, and applications that have the term “John X” in them.
Going back to Home (which you can access in the Blue Bar in the top right hand corner), you will see, under Applications, a total of about 5-6 applications. Applications in Facebook are mini-programs that can function if you add them. Some applications will allow you to check out your daily horoscope, raise a pet, or throw a pizza at a friend.
You can add an application by simply knowing its application name, typing it into the search bar, pressing on it, and adding it…You can choose to display it on your profile or not. Displaying an application on your profile will enable many users to see your application and IMHO, if you have too many, it can get annoying!
Right Hand Side of Home
The right-hand side of Home can have many subheadings. You might see Requests. Friends can Request you to join an event, a group, or an application. Non-friends can send you friend requests. You will see Notifications. I don't access this usually, because it's a list of what you've done with Facebook lately, and it's not like it matters. There can be Pokes. It's a function where anyone can “poke” you. A poke is nothing more than just a way for someone to nudge you for attention basically. It has no special purpose, and no meaning - but you can come up with one.
If you poke a non-friend back, they can see some parts of your profile even if you don't want them to. You will see Status Updates. Yes, you can input a “status” here. A status will begin with “Your name here is ________ (e.g. fishing, hungry, wanting to bathe in bubbles)”. You can fill in the blanks with whatever. If so, you might also see Birthdays. Facebook is awesome because it helps notify you every friend(s)'s birthday who is coming up a couple days before so you don't forget! Then you will see Invite Your Friends. Do so if you'd like. Other things are straight forward.
The Profile/Your Life
Alright! Now we can finally get to the more interesting part. Go to the Blue Bar and click on Profile. Your profile is basically your life. This is like your front page when somebody finds you on Facebook. If they decide to add you, or if they're in your network (I'll explain networks later), they can see your profile. Or, if you'd like, you can set privacy levels to low and everyone on Facebook can check you out…
