What’s the rest of it? There are really only two areas that I haven’t delved into: Groups and Notes (and keep in mind, FB changes constantly, so these could go away).
Groups
Groups: a lot more self-explanatory than you might expect.
Trekkies at Florida Supercon (Photo credit: daspader)
They are, of course, a means for people to gather themselves together. Facebook is enormous and so, instead of looking through several million people to try to find someone who likes, say, Star Trek United, you can hunt for a Star Trek group, join it and, voila! Instant collection of people with an interest similar to your own.
Joining in a group affords few obligations. Get invited to a group event? Well, it’s nice to RSVP, but not necessary. New discussion in the group? Well, it’s nice to participate, but you don’t need to. Add photos? Again, lovely, but no one’s holding a gun to your head.
Group Management
Managing a group differs a tad because it’s good to keep it lively. I’ve already talked a bit about groups before in this series, so I won’t repeat what I’ve said. However, mainly you want to keep discussions going (if any) and interest up. Gathering an enormous number of fans (yes, I know they are called Likes now, but what’s the human term? Likers? That just sounds weird, Facebook) helps with that.
This helps because it’s a somewhat objective means of showing interest in your group or cause or company, but since there’s a proliferation of dual accounts, that’s not necessarily much of an achievement. Plus, since it’s so easy to toss a Share or Like button on any site, and Liking is so easy, having a lot of fans often just means you got your group in front of a bunch of people who are fine with clicking on a Like button, and nothing more. A group with 1,000 fans is not necessarily going to be easier to monetize than a group with only 100.
Notes
Notes became yet another means of getting across information. The main difference between them and discussions? The replies seem more like subordinate-appearing comments versus discussion replies.
Huh?
Yeah, it’s a difference without much of a real distinction.
The main usage I’ve seen for Notes consists of old-fashioned “getting to know you” kinds of notes. You know, the kind where you’re asked your favorite ice cream flavor or the name of your childhood pet. I’ve been on the Internet for over a decade and a half and, frankly, I think I’ve seen all of these by now.
The last bit about Facebook is its very ubiquity. One of the reasons why it is so successful is because it’s, well, so successful. E. g., a long time ago, it hit a tipping point and started to become famous for the sake of being famous, and got bigger pretty much just because it was already huge.
It is well-known to be a worldwide phenomenon. Mentioning it is so obvious, so simple and so well-known that it practically isn’t product placement to talk about it any more, much like mentioning a telephone in a movie isn’t really product placement to give a profit to Alexander Graham Bell’s descendants.
See you online. And, yes, I will friend you if you like.
Podcasting can get you to a wider audience. It’s a different medium from what you might be used to. And it offers practice and the opportunity to polish some skills that you, the writer, might not have realized you needed, such as thinking on your feet and being an interview subject.
Alas, I currently no longer podcast. But these tips don’t go out of style.
Getting Started with Podcasting
What do you need for podcasting? This image is a pretty good summary of what you need –
Podcast 1 (Image by user Tim Wilson on Wikimedia Commons). File is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The good news is that you have most of this stuff already. In fact, you don’t even need everything that’s in the image.
Computers
It doesn’t seem to matter too much which type of computer you use. You really just need an Internet connection. You will need some speed, so dispense with dial up if you’re still using it (someone out there is, right?). I would, though, recommend using an actual computer as opposed to a phone for podcasting, as the resultant file is going to be huge.
Microphones
The image shows a studio-style mic, but the truth is, you don’t need to get quite so fancy. My own microphone is part of a headset. It works just fine and most importantly, the mouthpiece is adjustable. You want adjustability because, inevitably, you’re going to sneeze or cough, or the phone will ring or whatever.
Software
To be able to talk to your fellow podcasters on your show, or to your guests, you’ll need some software. Essentially what you are looking for is chat. My team and I liked to use TeamSpeak. I imagine you could do as well with Yahoo! or Facebook chat. Just make sure that whatever you are using is private. Oh, and turn any sound notifications off.
If you’re going to put your podcast on YouTube (I think this is generally a good idea), you’ll need software for that, too. I use software that came from my school, Screencast-o-matic. The school also uses TechSmith Relay but I prefer Screencast-o-matic. Either way, you want software which allows you to record a fairly long video.
You may not think that you need any sort of visual art software, but I beg to differ. At minimum, your podcast needs a logo or at least a slide that you can slap onto the front of your YouTube video. Photoshop or Gimp is ideal, but Paint or even Microsoft PowerPoint can do in a pinch.
Image Permissions
If you are going to use an image that you didn’t make, check the license! I like to use Wikimedia Commons as a lot of their images have open licenses or they just require an attribution and nothing more. But remember – just because an image exists online and you can right-click and save it, does not mean that you have permission to use it! When in doubt, use one of your own images. I like to use scenery images if I don’t have a logo. Scenery can even be something really tiny, such as one flower bud.
For sound editing, the beauty of TeamSpeak is that it allows for sound recording. But you will still need to trim something or other. I have Audacity though I admit I don’t use it for much (I don’t do the sound editing for our podcast). But Audacity is otherwise useful.
Practice
You should practice before you try to go anywhere with podcasting. It doesn’t need to be long or involved. Get to know the software. For example, TeamSpeak allows for a push to talk feature. Use it! This will help a lot when you are recording, as you need to consciously press a button for any sound to come out. Practice using this until it’s second nature.
Use Audacity, and record yourself saying something simple and scripted. It can be a nursery rhyme or the like. You don’t want to be doing this for more than a minute or so.
The idea here is to listen to playback. Can you be understood? Are you too breathy? Does your accent push through a bit too much? Do you talk too fast? Every single one of these issues can be fixed, including the accent.
Fix Your Audio
Generally, you will need to slow down and enunciate. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun, but at least in the beginning you’ll want to talk more slowly, in particular if you have a thick accent.
If you’re too breathy-sounding, try bringing the mic farther away from your mouth. As for outside noises, you’ll need to close windows and doors, put pets outside, and turn off fans and space heaters. Set your phone on mute.
When you work with co-hosts, practice with them at least once. Remember to not talk over them and, if you’re laughing at their jokes, you need assure that even your laughter is being recorded.
Hosts and Guests
Consider your subject and your potential audience. On the G & T Show, we talked about Star Trek and Star Trek Online. This included the novels and cosplay. We would also branch out to talk about other gaming and other science fiction. Having this broad a topic but with its own limitations made it fairly easy to come up with show ideas. As for guests, our hosts networked at conventions, in the STO game, and on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Cohosts
A co-host is an extremely good idea, as otherwise you’re talking to yourself a lot. While you could carry a show by yourself, it’s a lot easier if you don’t have to. Three hosts tends to be a really good number, particularly if the third is not too active. You’ll quickly find your hosts unconsciously dividing into three groups:
The talker – this person won’t necessarily stay on topic all the time, but they can fill dead air.
The organizer – this person understands creating a theme and keeping the show on target. This person often remembers to thank the guests.
The utility infielder – this person can chime in and also cover if either of the first two cannot podcast. Along with the organizer, this person often performs research and gathers potential podcast material in advance.
Guests
As for guests, consider your circle, both online and off. You can podcast without guests, and you will most likely need to get a few under your belt before anyone will want to visit.
However, when you do get guests, the usual details apply, e. g. be polite, give them ample time to plug whatever they want to plug, and prepare questions for them in advance. If your guest writes, for example, you might want to talk about the themes in their book, where they get their inspiration, how long they’ve been writing, and how they first became published.
Think outside the box and consider guests a little removed from your basic subject. Hence if your subject is books and writing, why not have a cover artist on as a guest, or a professional editor? Maybe feature a literary agent or a representative from a publishing house.
Podcasting Extras
At G & T we had a Streaming page and used a minicaster. This also included a hosted chat room – the show broadcasted live and the audience could listen and follow along in the chat room. This was not necessary, but it’s fun.
Blogging
We also blogged about the show, which meant that we took notes (in our case, the utility infielder did this). The blog was a great place to get the URLs in that we may have talked about but our audience might not have gotten the first time we mentioned them. With the blog, we could just make clickable outbound links. We also made sure that a player was embedded into the blog, so that a reader could listen to the show if they would prefer that.
Podcasting and Distribution
We always uploaded our podcast to not only iTunes, but also MixCloud and YouTube. These spread our broadcast even further. We used a regular logo card as the image accompanying our YouTube videos. For special interviews, we made different images, usually with our guest’s provided headshot.
To introduce new segments, we used bumpers. These are just short (less than half a minute long) introductions to various segments (e. g. Star Trek News). Ours consisted of our utility infielder’s niece giving the title of the segment and then some introductory music that we had permission to use (always get permission or make sure that music is public domain!).
Bumpers help because they provide a smooth transition between segments and they can cover up any ragged transitions. We spliced these into the completed file. Our announcer girl also recorded our intro and our credits portion (with music we could use), so we added these as a part of post-production. Again, these provided recognizable transitions for our audience.
Promotions and Podcasting
We promote our show on social media, with mainly our YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. We also have Tumblr, and Pinterest accounts but use them less. Our main promotions come from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. We also promote at conventions, including a table at Star Trek Las Vegas for the past few years.
Why Not Podcasting?
So what are you waiting for? Why not give podcasting a try?
At least, that’s what Mark Zuckerberg would want us all to think, wish and feel. I can understand that, a desire to make a website about as universal as possible. Once the site stopped being exclusive to collegians, the inevitable business model was to universalize it. And the site, today (although that will probably change), has about the best chance to become a truly universal web experience as any site.
Universality
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So, are you on the biggest social media site on the planet? About 1.82 billion daily users are, as of this writing (late 2020). But, wait, not so fast. Is that number truly accurate? Absolutely not. After all (and for different reasons), my husband and I each have more than one account. Do you? Even if you don’t, I bet you’ve got at least one friend who does, and probably lots more.
And that is perfectly all right, and is absolutely permitted by the site (although they’d like to change that). And they are trying to….
Real Names
Facebook also pushes for users to go with their correct names. Why? Because if you can hide behind a username, you might flame people more than if you can’t. Real names also (in theory) help to eliminate duplicates. But in all honesty, how many guys named Mike Brown do you know? I can think of two I’ve known in my life and that figure is probably more like four or five.
Even middle names might not fix such a duplication issue. There are probably several men with the name of Michael David Brown in the world.
Also, though, another use for real names is better marketing. If you Anglicize your name, then an advertiser might miss that you’re Hispanic, and incorrectly market to you.
Not So Fast On Those Real Names
We have all seen names which are not quite so perfectly right, though. How many of us have seen married women using a middle name of something like Was(whatever their maiden name was)? Hence Susan Davis might call herself Susan WasSmith Davis. It’s not a perfect solution, and you don’t really have to do that, anyway. Still, there are plenty of people who do.
Others might place a nickname within the middle name field. Robert Bob Brady, or Richard Dick Daily. But again, they might not have to. The more common nicknames are already going to come up in a search, even though, in both of these examples, the nickname starts with a letter different from the full name.
Still others may try to use stage names, but Facebook would rather you just created a fan page or had someone do so for you. This is not just to nicely help you keep your personal and professional lives separate. It’s also to market to your fan base better.
No Real Name, No, I Mean it, Facebook!
Then there are people who have damned good reasons for never using their real names, such as people escaping domestic violence. Facebook has gotten better and more sensitive when it comes to such needs.
Why Facebook?
The site’s main purpose (in case you’re just coming into the light after a few years on a desert island), is to sell advertising. Its offshoot purpose is to connect people, of all stripes, for free. But it’s those connections which sell the advertising.
There’s a lot else to it, at least on a general basis. But it’s still a valuable business tool for any Social Media Marketing Campaign.
But never forget: you’re the product Facebook is selling.
The Best Parts of the Site for Social Media Marketing
Facebook’s main virtues, when it comes to your business, can currently be divided into three basic areas:
Personal pages and peripheral connections to same
Company pages and groups and peripheral connections thereto, and,
Offsite connections back to the site
By “peripherals”, I mean all the extra stuff that goes along with the site experience, and not computer hardware peripherals.
The Concept of Universalish Reach at Facebook
Beyond just the sheer numbers, Facebook is extremely good at putting people together who are similar. You always get friend suggestions, yes? Those people tend to either have friends in common with you, or they have some other characteristic in common with you. That ‘in common’ bit might be home town. Or it might be favorite sports team. Another possible connection could be where you work.
Now, let’s face it: if you work in a huge Fortune 50 company, then you’ll have tons of coworkers. And the chances are beyond good that you won’t know everyone. You may not even know everyone in your office building or even on your floor.
So sometimes when a friend request arises, it may feel like a mystery. Hence – look for a commonality.
Clutches of People
But let’s get back to the people you do connect with. It’s perfectly natural to hang out with the people you went to high school with, or who love the same sports team you do. You might feel more comfortable with fellow cancer survivors. Or you might want to set up a political echo chamber. Another thing you might want to do is spend time with people in the same profession as you.
But no matter what, we people tend to group together. It’s a natural tendency. We’ve been gathering together since before there was a Homo sapiens species.
Facebook just exploits that. Really, really well.
And if antitrust cases go one way, they might not in the future. But we don’t know that yet.
Social Media Continues its Relentless Pace to Try to Make You Stay Put
It’s a relentless pace out there. And much like the holidays accelerate the end of the year, and we suddenly look up on January 7th or so and wonder just what the hell just happened, social media is continuing to not so much reap the whirlwind as to be the whirlwind. But at the same time, there’s an effort afoot to slow down and control the whirlwind.
Twitter’s Relentless Pace
English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Case in point: Twitter‘s recent changes are designed to keep people on as long as possible. They do this by embedding media more directly and making it so that you don’t have to leave Twitter’s embrace in order to enjoy a clip or a photograph. So far, so good. But shortened URLs allow for more malware exploits. It’s like one step forward, a step back and another one to the side.
Facebook’s Relentless Pace
Facebook, yet again, looks to change its layout. The profile is going to become richer and provide more information. This may or may not be useful to users but it will certainly keep them on longer. At least, that will happen in the beginning, when it’s a novel concept.
LinkedIn’s Relentless Pace
Long ago, LinkedIn tried adding Signal to make it easier to track even more of the social media avalanche – and, of course, to try to keep people on LinkedIn as long as possible.
Currently, they are using status types of communications. Sounds a lot like Facebook, eh?
The Common Thread
What these changes had in common, other than, perhaps, novelty for the sake of novelty, is the desire to keep people on site as long as possible. Put some tar down, and have us all stick, at least for a while.
So while the internet spins ever faster, and social media sites attempt to keep up, their overall strategies seem to try to slow us all down. Will it work? Is it a foolish dream to think you can keep people around with such tricks, such slick bells and whistles?
Lack of Content
What disturbs me is that there’s not a lot of content happening. And it would, could, should make me want to hang around. Instead of hiring writers to improve things, or rewarding good current content providers, each of the big three sites is instead pursuing a software solution. But what’s the sense in hanging around a site if the content isn’t compelling? Or are we, instead, merely getting the sites that we, perhaps, deserve?
Hence here’s what happens if my Facebook friends list is dominated by people I went to High School with over thirty years ago. Their status updates and my wall have a lot of news of their birthdays, their children and their careers. But isn’t that what we would expect? And if I instead tip my list in a different direction, and it’s suddenly dominated by the people I work with or diet with or do artwork with, the news is going to be different.
In particular, politically, you can see very different versions of each site, depending on your bubble. After all, a lot of us prefer to see people we like and agree with.
Comparison to Reality TV
One thing about Reality TV is that it’s anything but real if it’s at all successful. Because people just, generally, don’t lead terribly interesting lives (yes, you too, gentle reader). We pick up the dry cleaning. Or we bicker over the remote. We forget to buy sausages and make do with hot dogs. And around and around and around we go. And all three of the big social media sites, when we are not following celebrities and businesses, are really just a big agglomeration of Post-It Notes whereby we tell each other to grab milk on the way home. For “Reality” to be compelling at all, it’s got to be unreal, and scripted. It must become this fight or that rose ceremony or this other weird pancake-making challenge.
The big three older social media sites, when you strip away the celebrities and the companies, can be a boatload of errands or a standard-form holiday letter. You know the kind, where you learn little Suzie has taken up the clarinet. Over and over ad infinitum.
No wonder we need software solutions to keep us there. The relentless pace continues.
It says so much more about Social Media than most can say, and it does it in a breezy, easy to understand style.
The main idea behind this rather detailed video consists of a retelling of the Nativity Story. The video does so through the medium of social media, with everything from Facebook statuses to Foursquare checkins, to tweets, and more. Even electronic mail gets into the act. The Virgin Mary apparently uses Gmail.
Even More
And then there is even more, with a look at Nazareth from Google Earth. Of course there is a check for directions from Nazareth to Bethlehem. A check for hotel space reveals only a stable available (but of course). Joseph buys a cow (from Farmville, I would guess).
The Magi discuss their offerings (over Gmail – man, Google has its hands in everything!). And they pick up their gold, frankincense and myrrh at, you guessed it, Amazon. Twitter gets into the act as the Magi, naturally, follow the star there (very clever play on words there).
Eventually, the visit to the baby by the Magi gets placed onto video and uploaded to – could there be any other place more perfect? – YouTube. The video shows, I suspect, a play.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
This beautifully made and cleverly written and produced video comes to us from ExcentricGrey, which is evidently a Portuguese advertising firm. They report that this viral video has over 20 million views. Viewers are concentrated more in the United States and Western Europe than elsewhere, a function (probably) at least in part due to the video being made available in both English and Portuguese. Oddly enough, Portugal did not seem to have a very big concentration of viewers. Neither did Portuguese-speaking Brazil, Mozambique or Angola.
I was inspired by this post in Angela Connor‘s blog. If you don’t know Angela Connor, I urge you to check her out; her blog is extremely insightful and is still one of my favorites.
Her ideas make a great deal of sense, and I think some of this is why the Blizzard forum experiment in real names for users was such an immediate and egregious flop.
Masks
The ‘net, like it or not, is for many people a place of masks. You pretend to be younger and thinner than you are. Or you pretend to be unmarried. You pretend to be a Klingon. Or you’re a teenager and pretend to be an adult. Or you pretend to be another gender or richer or lovelier or more conservative or whatever.
And the masks can be freeing to many. Perhaps they were freeing when the ancient Greeks donned them while performing “Oedipus Rex” for the first time. I think there is more of a place for them than perhaps we’d all care to admit. Because there seems to be a value to being able to spread war paint (or lamp black) on one’s face, or wear a Halloween costume.
And this is not the same as our reality. It is related but not identical. Maybe the librarian who goes out for Halloween dressed as a dance hall girl wants to be known as someone who takes risks (and maybe foolish ones, at that). But when the morning after rolls around, she’s back in the library helping others do research.
Anonymous Commenting
This kind of anonymous commenting allows for something like this. Because the sympathetic guy who’s really seething inside gets to call people out. He gets to be a bully and be an all-around racist jerk (I have worse names, but don’t wish to besmirch my blog) behind one screen name. But then he surfs to a different site where he can chat up the ladies with his sensitive New Age guy demeanor, all behind another screen name. And then when the time to log off comes, he goes home and kisses his wife and plays with his children. And this is all one guy.
Facebook
To comment openly through a full, correct name (usually) medium like Facebook would be to cut off the dance hall girl. And it would stifle the racist jerk, the ladies’ man, and any number of other secret selves in favor of a drab and ordinary world. Even on a news site, which is pretty much the definition of drab unless there’s some sort of a hot story, the jerk, the dancer and the Romeo all want to be free.
Who’s Real?
But we shouldn’t take their opinions as seriously as the real people. Because, even though those personae live in real people’s skins, it’s the real people who vote, marry, pay taxes, work, make the news and are members of our real society.
The trouble is telling them apart and knowing which one is real.
Life, Liberty … And Facebook for All – Your Home Page
Your home page is vital. Log into Facebook, and it’s the first thing you see. It’s your Home Page. So here’s what’s in it. You can divide it into what look like columns.
NOTE: Facebook constantly A/B tests. Features move around, change, are renamed and resized, or disappear all the time. These are rolled out in stages; your neighbor may have a different-looking Home Page from yours. And this is 100% normal.
Home Page Links
So first of all, column one (left side, top):
Facebook (Photo credit: Scott Beale)
News Feed
Messenger
Watch
Marketplace
Then shortcuts; this is a section you add to or subtract from.
Then …
Explore
Pages
Groups
Events
Fundraisers
Games etc.
Your Feed
Then column two (center):
Status messages on friends’ pages
Other friend activities
Anything your friends or the pages you follow are sharing
Column Three
Then column three (right, top):
Events
Friends’ Birthdays
Marketplace
Groups You Might Like
People You May Know
Targeted Advertisements
A list of friends available on chat (at the bottom)
Let’s start with Column One:
Groups
So this is a list of the groups you have joined.
Pages
These are pages you are following.
Friends
So pretty obviously, this is a way to access your entire list of friends.
Create Group
So you can create groups for any reason. And this includes to support a beloved entertainment figure, promote your business or just complain about people wearing Crocs. So I’ll get into the specifics later.
Games
These will rotate as you access more games, depending upon recency.
Status Messages on Friends’ Pages
So this is the actual News Feed itself. And you can comment on others’ statuses (statii?) or posted links.
Other Friend Activities
First of all, you are served everyone’s activities. Facebook can be a tsunami of data. However, a lot is aggregated; you are usually shown that six people joined a group, rather than separate messages on all half-dozen.
Events
So if you’ve got upcoming events and you haven’t RSVP’d, they’ll show up here, but you can jettison them by clicking the x on the right side. Note that you’ll be invited to all sorts of stuff, including sponsored activities and openings by commercial ventures. And RSVP’ing is not strictly necessary. However, as an event organizer, I have to say it’s appreciated so as to at least get a handle on headcount (and know who not to expect). You need not RSVP for commercial store openings or whatnot.
Friends’ Birthdays
Whether they’ve made the year apparent is their own business. But if they’ve got the month and day up on Facebook, birthdays will show up here. And of course you’re under no obligation to wish people a Happy Birthday, but it is kind of nice.
People You May Know
So this is based upon some sort of an algorithm whereby Facebook looks at things like your current friends list, their friends, your location and possibly also your school(s) and workplace(s). However, I don’t believe the latter are included at this time. So if you have any mutual friends, Facebook lists them as well. Facebook does not always get this right, or it gets it wrong in interesting ways, e. g. Facebook says I “may know” the spouse of someone I attended High School with. Well, unless I went to High School with the spouse (over 30 years ago), then there isn’t much of a likelihood there.
Hence there are times when this list is bewildering. Hey, Facebook is doing the best it can.
Targeted Advertisements on Your Home Page
Well, they’re as targeted as Facebook can make them. This apparently has a basis in your click activity, your likes, your friends’ likes and whenever you click on an ad to get rid of it. Again, sometimes Facebook can get this wrong in rather spectacular ways; for example, when I wrote this post originally, it showed me an ad for Toyota. And I have neither owned nor contemplated owning one, ever.
A list of friends available on chat
It should go without saying that you should never click on links from chatters you don’t know well. And you’re under no obligation whatsoever to answer anyone’s instigated chat.
So a big part of the Facebook experience is not only playing games but also sharing them with others, or sharing status or links. The way you see and can participate in this sharing is via your Home Page. It is, essentially, a bulletin board between you and your pals. But keep your own wall the way you want it. If you don’t want people to swear or argue politics, etc., that is 100% within your rights.
Life, Liberty … And Facebook for All – Your Profile Page Part I
Let’s look at your profile page part 1.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you’ve seen it dozens, if not hundreds, of times – it’s your Profile Page.
Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There is also a Home Page, but I’ll cover that in the next segment. Right now, let’s just concentrate on your Profile. Here’s mine.
Profile Page Part 1: Basics
So at minimum, the Profile page consists of the following:
Wall
Info and,
Photos
And it also contains:
A space for your profile picture
Information on any mutual friends you might share with anyone peeking at your profile
A small subgroup of your friends
Your Likes
and Your Photos
Your Links
A share button, and,
On the right side, there are advertisements
NOTE: Facebook is the biggest A/B tester on the planet. They constantly move things around in order to try for an improved user experience. Hence this means you may see buttons moved, resized, renamed, or even eliminated. And it also means your neighbor might see an entirely different configuration.
Let’s start with the tabs.
Wall
Up at the top, you can put in your status. There doesn’t seem to be a true limit to how long a status message can be, but after a few lines, it’s excessive. People put all sorts of nonsense in here – including not only statements of their adoration for celebrities but also mundane minutiae such as the scintillating fact that they’re about to go pick up the dry cleaning. If you want to use Facebook at all for your business, your status messages should really be short, somewhat on point and inoffensive (this is also true if you are looking for work and are not using Facebook for any of that – potential employers are watching!).
Below is the wall itself, where friends can post replies to your status (they can also reply directly to the status), send you greetings, send you game requests, etc. You can always delete or hide these messages, which can be a good idea if they are becoming something you’d rather not share with others. People routinely answer all sorts of dumb questions about me (e. g. Do you think Janet Gershen-Siegel has kissed a boy? Gee, I’ve been married since 1992. You make the call.) and I usually just hide or delete those.
You can also hide notifications from various applications so, if everyone you know is playing Farmville, and you don’t care about it, right-click on any Farmville notification and select the hide Farmville notifications button. However, be aware that there are any number of similar or satellite applications (gifts, new gifts or whatever), so you may be doing a rather similar task more than once. Still, understand that you don’t need to ask people to stop sending you requests. Just block the app.
Info
You can add any number of tidbits here. At minimum, you should at least list your marital/dating status, your birth date (the year is optional) and your current city and/or home town. This will draw people in and make it easier for them to find you, particularly if you have a rather common name. You want friends and business associates to figure out that they want you, the Mary Lou in Hicksville, New York, versus the Mary Lou in Mars, Pennsylvania.
Marital status isn’t strictly necessary (and I’ve found it doesn’t stop guys from sometimes hitting on me – eek), but I personally think it’s a nice thing to include. However, of course, no one can force you to do this and naturally it is illegal in the United States for a potential employer to demand this information.
Birth date is kind of nice to have, partly as an identifier and partly to give another piece of information out that’s just pleasant to see. It’s a minor revelation (particularly if you only give out the month and day) and is essentially harmless. And an American employer cannot legally ask for the year. However, employees do have to be of a certain age in order to work full-time at all. Still, if you get that far along in a job application, an employer won’t use Facebook to confirm your age – the employer will instead use official governmental records like your birth certificate for that.
Adding your birth date also means the inevitable onslaught of Facebook birthday greetings.
Biography
Biography is optional and, if you use Facebook for business, keep it short, on point and inoffensive. Work history is also not necessary but it can be helpful if you need for people to find you (are you the Mary Lou in Hicksville who worked at AIG, or at the Dairy Queen?). Plus that can add to the networking vibe but keep in mind that Facebook for networking remains a poor substitute for LinkedIn.
Educational information also helps to identify you. Graduation years are not necessary. Likes and interests will show up in part by your typing in here and also by you “liking” various pages. Keep in mind that this can be found, so “liking” a page with a profane name is going to be something that can be picked up by potential employers and clients.
Profile Page Part 1: Photos
These are pretty self-explanatory. Any photographs that you’re tagged in them will show up here. You can collect photos into albums, of course. Also, if a photograph is unflattering, compromising or just plain not of you, you can always untag yourself. Before my parents were not on Facebook, I was sometimes tagged on my mother’s photos so I would be able to find them. I don’t mind this. My profile has enough photographs of me that it’s obvious I’m not her. But you might. So, if this happens, talk to whoever’s doing this. There are other ways of sharing photographs and albums which might suit your needs better.
… And Facebook for All – Your Account Settings Explained
… And Facebook for All – Your Account Settings – in Facebook, how to do you change your account settings? When you pull down on the Account section of Facebook, you see a few choices but they change. Keep in mind that Facebook is continuously testing its format. What worked a year ago might not work now, but these are pretty close to being right although some of the parts have moved around on the page or might now have new names.
First of all, you get a list of your friends. And if you have separate friend lists (say, for work or school), those lists are on the left. Facebook does move these sorts of settings around. By the time you read this blog post, this feature could potentially have been moved. Truth is, it may be gone by now.
You can add friends to various lists, remove them, or delete them from your list altogether. There are also suggested names to be added to various lists (assuming you’ve chosen a list, versus all of your friends). The default here is not only to show the entire list of friends, but to put the ones you’ve interacted with most recently up at the top.
Account Settings: Manage Pages
If you manage pages – and you may very well have that as a task if you are using Facebook for your business – here is a link straight to each page and how to change it. Simply click “Go to Page” and you are transported to the correct page in question. I’ll get into the specifics of what you can do from there later in this series.
Account Settings
This is a part of Facebook that always seems to be changing. It is entirely possible that, by the time you read this blog post, these instructions will be obsolete. I’ll keep everything at a high level and won’t get into too many specifics. So it is divided as follows:
Settings
Networks
Notifications
Mobile
Language
Payments
Account Settings: Basics
This section is currently divided as follows:
Name – your real name
Username
Email – self-explanatory
Password – self-explanatory
Linked Accounts – you can put more than one account together
Security Question – self-explanatory
Privacy – control the information you put out there. But do keep in mind: if something is truly personal, the Internet is an awfully foolish place to put it in.
Account Security – you can add some form of extra protection
Download Your Information – save your photos, etc. to a ZIP file
Deactivate Account – self-explanatory
Networks
You can join networks, such as identifying yourself with an employer or a school you’ve attended.
Notifications
Control settings for notifications such as when someone tags you in a photo. I think that the default settings are pretty excessive. I like to know if someone wants to add me as a friend, and when I’ve been tagged in a photograph. Other than that, I’ll just check when I’m online. Obviously, my preferences need not be identical to yours.
Mobile
Activate a phone and register for Facebook text messages here.
Language
Set a primary language or translate Facebook into other languages from here. There’s currently a rather extensive list, including some languages not written with a Western alphabet.
Payments
So track your credits balance, credits purchase history, payment methods and preferred currency here.
This area is undoubtedly going to continue to evolve as questions come up and the increasingly complicated Facebook system breaks in all sorts of interesting and as-yet unexpected ways. So you can even ask a question, and the most common questions are listed. Unsurprisingly, these include topics such as how to delete your account or change your name.
But keep in mind: Facebook won’t answer 99%+ of any questions you have for them. Why? Because they are running an enormous site with a surprisingly tiny number of employees. Hence many of the judgement calls come from bots.
Log Out
Pretty self-explanatory. Click here and you’ll log out of Facebook.
… And Facebook for All – Your Profile Page, Part II
Your Profile Page, Part II.
First of all, Facebook members have seen it dozens, if not hundreds, of times – your Profile Page.
Let’s talk some more about your Profile. Here’s mine.
In addition to the basic tabs at the top, it also contains:
A space for your profile picture
Information on any mutual friends you might share with anyone peeking at your profile
A small subgroup of your friends
Your Likes
and Your Photos
Your Links
A share button, and,
On the right side, there are advertisements
NOTE: Facebook continually A/B tests, and so buttons and features move, change, are resized, added, or can disappear altogether. Your neighbor can sometimes see a rather different version of Facebook versus yours. And this is normal.
Let’s look at these in order.
A space for your profile picture
No one is stopping you from putting up a picture that is not, actually, of you. And I’ve seen dogs on Facebook, scenery, people’s children and cartoon characters. Hence it’s a place to be somewhat expressive. However, recognize that, if you’re using Facebook at all for your business (or if you’re simply looking for work), you’ll need to tone this down. If you want to go fairly conservative (which I personally think is best but opinions differ), go with a headshot or a head and shoulders shot that’s fairly recent. And, do make sure you’re smiling.
Mutual Friends
If someone surfs in and finds your Profile Page, they’ll probably be drawn to whether you’re really the person they’re looking for, and whether you have any acquaintances in common. If you’ve got a somewhat common name (e. g. Gregory Cole), then it’s really going to help out people if they see anyone who you know is in common with whoever they know.
One way I’ve used this information has been in locating High School friends, as we tend to have the same mutual friends. If I see that Jane Smith is also friends with John Jones and Dave Brown (names are made up, of course), then I realize, aha! Chances are good that Jane and I attended High School together. However, sometimes it just means that Jane is a local (if John and Dave stayed in the area after graduation). Or it might mean she’s a younger or older sibling of my classmates. Hence it’s an imperfect system.
A small subgroup of friends
So this is six friends (fewer, if you have fewer than six friends, of course). And it used to be you had control over this, but apparently not anymore.
Your Likes
Whenever you click “Like” on a group or page, it can show up here. A few show up at a time, and they rotate. To take something out of rotation, un-“Like” it. Much older and inactive pages and groups show up less, as Facebook follows social signals in this area, too. E. g. pages and groups that appear inactive or even downright abandoned will lose precious visibility time and space to groups and pages that are up to date and lively.
Your Photos
So note here is where your profile picture shows up in all its glory, and bigger than on your Home Page. Therefore, make sure it looks good here as well as on your Home Page. If you’re going to use Facebook for business (or if you’re looking for work), make sure this is a flattering photograph that clearly shows your face. It need not be full-length (and, if it is, it’ll be smaller on the Home Page, but here it’s all visible) and, for God’s sake, smile!
Plus, photographs also show up on your wall if you upload them and agree to publish them to your wall.
And Your Links
So put a link in your status, or post it to your wall, and it will convert to something clickable. And if it comes from Youtube, it’ll even embed the video. And like most things on Facebook, any link can get comments or “Likes”.
A Share Button
Actually, there are several of these. Pretty much everything on Facebook can be shared in one manner or another, and even off Facebook.
Bottom line: your Profile Page is your face to the world. It is clickable, shareable and somewhat searchable. Don’t want people to know something about you? Don’t put it on your Profile Page.
