A Beginner's Guide to Facebook

What is Facebook? If you already use Facebook it is easy to forget what it was like before joining and how long it took to become familiar with the service. We can be harshly reminded of this when Facebook updates it's features and we are left wondering how to find things again. According to Wikipedia, Facebook is an online social networking service. Its name stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some American university administrations to help students get to know each other. So then, let's begin.

Anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address can join Facebook and over a billion users worldwide already have. Creating an account only takes a few minutes of your time. Using your browser navigate to Facebook.com. Under the words Sign Up enter your personal information and desired password. You can always edit this in settings later if you want to remove your birthday from what other people can view. After you have entered your information click Sign Up and you have a Facebook account.

You can choose to find friends who you are already connected to via email or who share your previous education or workplaces or simply skip this step. The next step is to upload a photo to use as your profile picture and confirm your email address. Then you are ready to search for and add your friends, find groups to join or pages to like that you are interested in. You can private message people or post directly on a friend's Timeline/Wall. You will receive notifications if anyone contacts you or requests you as a friend. It's best to only accept friend requests from people you know or trust.
If you require further help their is an excellent free tutorial with videos by GCFLearnFree.org. that I highly recommend. The most important things to remember are:

Choose a strong and preferably random password.

Avoid using the word "password" or obvious number combinations such as 12345. Passwords provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your computer. The stronger your password, the more protected your computer will be from hackers and malicious software. You should make sure you have strong passwords for all accounts on your computer as well as Facebook.

Edit your privacy settings. 

You'll need to decide how much you want to share on Facebook. If you just keep up with family and friends, you might prefer to share updates only with that close circle of people. This free video gives you all the additional help you will need to make sure your privacy settings are set to your personal requirements rather than Facebook's public default setting. For your own safety and protection it is important to consider who can see your posts and photos.

 

Understanding the Timeline.

The Timeline is your Facebook profile. It’s called a timeline because you can include information, important milestones and memories spanning your entire life. It's up to you, how much you want to reveal to your friends and followers. For more information you can click on the Facebook Help center or go to the Glossary of Terms.

News Feed.

Once you’ve logged into Facebook, the first thing you'll see is the News Feed. There you’ll view friend's status updates, new photos, links to articles and so on. Think of it like the front page of a newspaper where you can choose to view stories that are most recent or in order of importance determined by an algorithm. Simply click the "Sort" option at the top of your feed to determine the order of posts. To return to the News Feed after looking at other features simply click Home.

Status Update.

A status update is anything important to you at a particular moment in time that you deem shareable with Facebook friends. It's the equivalent of composing a new tweet on Twitter but without a limit to the number of characters you are allowed to use.

The Like and Share Buttons.

The “Like” button communicates your support of activities, brands, articles and products to fellow users.  When you click the Like button, the content also appears in the News Feed of your friends. It's a way to give positive feedback and connect. You can also "Like" Facebook pages which will enable their posts to show up in your Newsfeed. When you share a post it is added to your timeline and shows up in your friends Newsfeed for them to read.

So there you go, that's a basic lesson on using Facebook. There are more features to discover as you get to know the service such as Apps, Games, Tagging and Chat, even Poking! or you can just keep it simple. If you feel the need for more reassurance their is a great article specifically for the older generation joining Facebook by Julie Masis of The Boston Globe here and don't forget when you are busy catching up with your News Feed or playing Facebook games to search for the Social Media Against Crime page and your local group!