Facebook is the wildly popular, free social networking site that combines the best of blogs, online forums, photo sharing, clever applications, and interaction among friends. The one thing it doesn't have is a user's guide to help you truly take advantage of it. Until now. Facebook: The Missing Manual gives you a crystal clear and entertaining look at everything this fascinating Facebook phenomenon has to offer.

Teeming with high-quality color graphics, each page in this Missing Manual is uniquely designed to help you with specific Facebook tasks, such as signing up, networking, shopping, joining groups, finding or filling a job, and a whole lot more. You'll discover how to create your page and make connections with other members in no time — everybody who went to your school, for example, or those who work at your company or play on your soccer team. Then, bingo Instant access to the personal and professional details of all the folks you're connected with, the people they're connected with, and so on, and so on.

With Facebook: The Missing Manual, you learn to: Join a network, whether it's where you went to school, work-related, or based on other interests Look up old friends, find new ones, and decide who you'd like to keep track of Contact members by virtually poking them, or leaving notes on their message boards Get automatic updates from Facebook friends and send updates of your own Participate in groups of particular interest and meet up with members face-to-face Buy and sell using Facebook's marketplace and classified ads Find a job or hire employees by combing through the member pool Use Facebook as a collaboration tool to keep team members, co-workers, clients, and projects up to date Play it safe by using a multi-pronged approach to ensuring your privacy Think of Facebook as a 30-million-plus-entry searchable Rolodex on steroids With help from this guide, you'll quickly get into the Facebook experience — without getting in over your head.

For those seeking to become part of the growing Facebook online community, Vander Veer (whose many computer books include PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual and JavaScript for Dummies) explains how to move into the neighborhood and send messages to other Facebook "friends" for social networking and marketplace purposes. She also covers protecting privacy. Further resources, including using Facebook's help section, are appended. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)