Synopses & Reviews
Facebook is the wildly popular, free social networking site that combines the best of blogs, online forums and groups, photosharing, clever applications, and interaction among friends. The one thing it doesn't have is a users guide to help you truly take advantage of it. Until now. Facebook: The Missing Manual gives you a very objective and entertaining look at everything this fascinating Facebook phenomenon has to offer.
Teeming with high-quality color graphics, each page in this guide 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. Bingo: instant access to the personal and professional details of all the folks you're connected with, the folks they're connected with, and so on, and so on.
With Facebook: The Missing Manual, you learn to:
- Join a network, whether it's in your area, or 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 poking them, writing on their walls, and sending them gifts
- Get automatic updates from Facebook friends and send updates to them
- Participate in groups of particular interest and hook up with members face-to-face
- Buy and sell using Facebook's uniquely targeted marketplace and classified ads
- Find a job or hire employees by combing through Facebook's 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 Missing Manual, you'll quickly get in the swim of the Facebook experience -- without getting in over your head.
Review
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.
-- Shannon Hendrickson, Shannon Hendrickson
Review
Facebook [The Missing Manual] is relatively short at 268 pages, but contains a great deal of valuable information for new or confused users. The book is formatted to be user friendly with lots of graphics from the Facebook interface nested in large areas of white space and easily read text...If you're interested in getting the most out of Facebook, I highly recommend
Facebook: The Missing Manual; otherwise, you may continue to send me virtual gifts while I ignore your pokes.
-- Jeff Myers, Jeff Myers
Review
One of the beauties of the Missing Manuals is that there is always something new to discover and the research is quite thorough...I kept finding snippets of information, in the way of Tips or Notes, that would give just that bit extra.
-- Graham K. Rogers, Graham K. Rogers
Synopsis
Teeming with high-quality color graphics, each custom designed page of this cutting-edge book helps readers enhance their experience with Facebook, the free social networking site.
About the Author
E.A. Vander Veer started out in the software trenches, lexing and yaccing and writing shell scripts with the best of them. She remained busy and happy for years writing C++ programs and wresting data from recalcitrant databases. After a stint as an Object Technology Evangelist (yes, that's an actual job title), she found a way to unite all of her passions: writing about cool computer stuff in prose any human being can understand. Books followed-over a dozen so far-including Facebook: The Missing Manual, PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual, JavaScript for Dummies, and XML Blueprints. She lives in Texas with her husband and daughter. Email: [email protected].
Table of Contents
About the Creative Team; Acknowledgments; The Missing Manual Series; Introduction; How Facebook Works; What You Can Do With Facebook; About This Book; From Signing Up to Staying Connected; Chapter 1: Getting Started; 1.1 Signing Up for an Account; 1.2 Creating Your Profile; 1.3 Viewing Your Facebook Home Page; 1.4 Changing Account Information; Chapter 2: Joining a Network; 2.1 How Networks Work; 2.2 Viewing the Networks You're Already On; 2.3 Joining a Network; 2.4 Suggesting a New Network; Chapter 3: Finding and Adding Friends; 3.1 How Facebook Friends Work; 3.2 Finding Friends; 3.3 Inviting People to Be Your Friend; 3.4 Responding to Friend Requests; 3.5 Viewing Your Friends; 3.6 Organizing Your Friends; 3.7 Viewing Your Connections to Friends; 3.8 Breaking Up: Unfriending Friends; Chapter 4: Sending Messages to Friends; 4.1 Sending Messages; 4.2 Receiving Messages; 4.3 Poking; 4.4 Writing on Walls; 4.5 Sending Gifts; Chapter 5: Exchanging Automatic Updates; 5.1 Types of Updates; 5.2 News Feeds: What Others Are Doing; 5.3 Mini-feeds: What You're Doing; 5.4 Facebook Notifications; 5.5 Subscriptions; 5.6 Creating Notes (Blogs); 5.7 Controlling What People See About You; Interest Groups and Shopping; Chapter 6: Participating in Groups; 6.1 What's a Group?; 6.2 Finding Existing Groups; 6.3 Joining a Group; 6.4 Creating a Group; 6.5 Participating in Groups; Chapter 7: Facebook and the Real World: In-person Events; 7.1 The Three Different Kinds of Events; 7.2 Finding Existing Events; 7.3 RSVPing to an Event; 7.4 Creating Your Own Events; Chapter 8: Going Shopping; 8.1 The Facebook Marketplace; 8.2 Placing an Ad; 8.3 Finding Stuff; 8.4 Answering an Ad; Doing Business with Facebook; Chapter 9: Hiring and Getting Hired; 9.1 Recruiting New Hires; 9.2 Vetting Prospects; 9.3 Looking for a Job; Chapter 10: Collaborating on Projects via Facebook; 10.1 Keeping in Touch; 10.2 Exchanging Files; 10.3 Keeping Up-to-date with Feeds; Chapter 11: Advertising on Facebook; 11.1 Taking Polls; 11.2 Facebook Pages: Profiles for Bands, Brands, and More; 11.3 Social Ads (Targeted Announcements); 11.4 High-dollar Options; Privacy and Power Tools; Chapter 12: Customizing Facebook and Adding Applications; 12.1 Modifying Your Home Page and Profile; 12.2 Facebook Applications: An Overview; Chapter 13: Playing It Safe: Facebook Privacy; 13.1 Privacy and Facebook: An Overview; 13.2 Deciding How Much to Share; 13.3 Controlling Access to Your Account; 13.4 Adjusting Your Privacy Settings; 13.5 Fighting Back; Chapter 14: Facebook Mobile; 14.1 How Facebook Mobile Works; 14.2 Setting up Facebook Mobile; 14.3 Using Facebook Mobile; Appendix; Getting Help; Facebook Help; Contacting Facebook; Useful Facebook-related Web Sites;