Getting started with Facebook

HOW TO USE FACEBOOK FOR SOCIAL LEARNING INDEX
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Facebook is one of the largest public social networks with over 700 million registered members. Facebook lets members interact with one another, share photos, and videos, etc.  Facebook is being used for personal, educational and business purposes.

Understanding accounts

There are a number of ways to use Facebook:

  1. Set up a personal account where you become “friends” with others.  “Friendship” on Facebook is a reciprocal relationship. This means that your friends can see your personal profile and you can see theirs (depending on the privacy settings that have been set), and whatever they write appears in your news feed.
  2. Set up a professional or business page.  This is page with information about your business.  If people “like” your personal/business page, whatever you write will appear in their news feeds, but whatever they write will NOT appear in your news feed (unless you have already established a friendship through a personal profile page).   Professional/business pages are also visible to those who are NOT already Facebook users.

Facebook’s Terms of Use state that users can have only ONE account.  However, personal FB users set up (any number of) professional or business pages from their own personal account, and professional/business account users can also convert their page into a personal account, if they so wish.

Below we are going to take a look at how to create a personal account page.  If you don’t want a personal account and prefer to set up a professional/business page, go to Setting up a Facebook page

1 – Sign up for a Facebook personal account

Go to www.facebook.com and sign up. You need to provide your name, email address, state whether you are male or female, your birthdate, and then click Signup. 

You will need to validate your email address via the email that is sent to you.

2 – Ensure your privacy settings are correct

It is important that you set your privacy settings so that only the appropriate people can access your profile.  This can be public/Everyone or to specified friends.

You can set your privacy settings, select Account (top right-hand corner) and then Privacy Settings in the drop-down menu.

To find out more about setting your privacy settings, visit Privacy settings

3 – Customise your Facebook personal profile page

To customise your Facebook profile page – ie the page where you share information. – select Profile.

You can use the Edit Profile button to add or update information about you, including a profile picture. <

There are a number of areas to your Profile page

  1. Wall – This displays your status messages/ updates and your friends can leave messages for you here.
  2. Info – This displays information about you
  3. Photos – This displays pictures that you have posted or which you have been tagged in on Facebook.  Note some of these pictures will also appear at the top of your profile page, although you can delete them from this are if you wish.
  4. Friends – This displays the people you are friends with.

The Facebook Getting Started Guide: Set up a Profile will provide help on setting up your profile page.

NOTE: Once you have over 25 friends, you will be able to apply for a Facebook vanity name for your personal Facebook account.  Once you have chosen the name, it cannot be changed.

4 – Add a Facebook application

There are a lot of FB and 3rd party applications that can add extra functionality to a profile. You can find Facebook applications in the  Applications Directory.

To add a Facebook application, you will need to go the relevant app page, and then select “Add to my page” from underneath the app’s picture.  At which point you will then need to allow it to past data to and from your Facebook account.

5 -  The difference between Home and Profile pages

  • On your Home page – is your News Feed – you see all the status messages (and comments) of your friends.

  • On the Profile page you only see your status messages (and comments).

6 – How to access your Facebook account

Once you have set up your account, you can either do so by logging into Facebook in your web browser on your computer or

Reading List

How to de-clutter and simplify your Facebook wall, MakeUseOf.com, 14 March 2011

It’s YOUR privacy: Own it!, Jane Bozarth, 13 November 2010

9 sites to create cartoon for yourself for Facebook and Twitter profile, Geekers magazine, 5 April 2010

Cool ways to customise your Facebook profile with MyStuff, MakeUseOf, Ryan Dube, 16 March 2010

How to protect your privacy with Facebook’s new privacy settings in 17 easy steps, Inside Facebook, 19 January 2010

Facebook applications for learning, Ryann Ellis, Learning Circuits, 15 July 2009

How to import your blog into Facebook, Inside Facebook, 22 February 2009

Top 5 Facebook applications that don’t suck, MakeUseOf.com, 11 May 2008