Facebook Guide
Facebook is one of the fastest growing social networking site in the world. As of April 2009, nearly one quarter of all Australians, almost 5.5 million people, were registered users of Facebook. The website currently boasts over 200 million users worldwide.
Users of the website can find and interact with friends, family and business contacts. They can use the site to upload text, photos and videos of themselves and others. Each user can change their personal profile in order to update everyone about their life. Both public and private messages can be posted between users. A number of third party companies and individuals have also created a number of applications that can be used within Facebook. They include the ability for users to send virtual gifts to each other, challenge each other to a game of chess and play music from their favourite artists.
To join Facebook, click here. If you are a personal user, simply enter your full name, your email address and a password, and then choose your gender and date of birth, which you can hide from view to others if you wish! If you have a business or organisation, you can also join Facebook by clicking on the "Create a Page" link towards the bottom.
Once you have signed on to Facebook as a personal user, you will want to make contact with people. Facebook will guide you through the process when you first sign up, and you are able to search for friends at any time by clicking on "Find Friends" on the bottom of the page. You can also enter your email address and password, and Facebook will search for people who may match your contacts in your email program. You can also search for people by entering their name or email address. Once you find someone, you can either send them a message or ask to become their friend. If you ask to be their friend, Facebook will send them a message asking for confirmation that you are their friend. Once confirmed, you will be able to see the person's profile and receive updates about them.
An important thing to remember is that anyone can search for you on Facebook, so you need to be careful who is able to access your information. The best way to do this is by making sure you have appropriate privacy for your Facebook account. Hover your mouse over the "Settings" tab at the top right of the page, and then click on "Privacy Settings". On this page, shown below, you can click on "Profile", "Search", "News Feed and Wall" and "Applications" to change who can access your information in these different categories. You can provide access to everyone, networks and friends, friends only, a custom group that you can create or no one. You can also add people to a list that blocks all contact with them on Facebook, particularly useful if you want to make sure someone cannot find you on Facebook, or if you need to cease all contact with someone already on Facebook. To block someone, simply enter their name into the box at the bottom of the page and click on the "Block" button.
It is a very good idea to restrict access in the "Profile" area to friends only, as you may leave yourself open to identity theft if you do not. To do this, click on "Profile" and then use the drop down menus in each category to select who may see the basic information contained in your profile. In the example below, each category has been set to "Only Friends". Then click on "Contact Information" near the top of the page and repeat the same process here so that you can control who sees your contact information. Remember to click on the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the page once you are finished with the settings.
These settings will also be respected by any applications that you or your friends may add, which means your information will only be shown to those you have been given permission. If you would like to restrict access even more though, you can do so by clicking on "Applications" on the Privacy page.
If you click on "Search" on the Privacy page, you can control who is able to search for you and what information they will see when they do a search. If you would prefer not to have former school mates or current colleagues find you on Facebook, you can opt to have only friends (on Facebook, not in the real world) be able to search for you. Or you may be happy for friends of friends to search for you as well, as you tend to meet a lot of people at your friends' parties that you would like to stay in contact with, for example.
Facebook therefore provides a good range of choices with regard to safeguarding your privacy, but make sure to take advantage of them!
Questions? Comments?
Are you a member of Facebook? Would you like to be, but have some questions first? Want to talk about the good and the bad about Facebook? Would you like to share your favourite applications on Facebook?
Join the community discussing Facebook on our forum here.
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