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Facebook Basics
(for individuals)
ABOUT THIS CLASS

This class is designed to give a basic introduction into Facebook Basics. Throughout the class, we will
progress from learning how to create a Facebook account to adding friends. It is impossible in this
amount of time to become totally proficient with Facebook, but it is our hope that this class will provide
a springboard to launch you into this exciting world of social media!

Course Objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to

 Open a Facebook account.

 Become familiar with the Facebook interface.
 Find friends.
 Know privacy options.
 Upload photos.
 Be educated in other resources available for your Facebook learning.

This booklet will serve as a guide as we progress through the class, but it can also be a valuable tool
when you are working on your own. Any class instruction is only as effective as the time and effort you
are willing to invest in it. I encourage you to practice soon after class. There will be additional computer
classes in the near future, and I am always available for questions during Tech Tuesdays and Thursdays
(call to confirm the time.)

Meg Wempe, Adult Services Librarian

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What is Facebook?
Facebook (FB) is a very popular social networking site that was launched in 2004. Registered
users create a profile, which allows them to upload photos/videos, send messages, and connect
with other people and businesses. It is international, and available in approximately 50
languages. Facebook also allows for creating events (and sending invitations) as well as a host
of other things, such as playing games.
Businesses, bands, and organizations often create a Facebook page to market or promote
themselves. This class will focus on the basics for the individual, not the business.

Signing Up
To create an account, you must have a working email address.
Please keep in mind that when you are signing up, you do not have to provide all the
information that you are asked for – you can limit it to what you feel comfortable submitting.
Remember, depending on your privacy settings or the specific piece of information, it may be
seen by a great number of people.
Note: though you must provide your birthday when signing up, you can change the setting so
that it is not viewable (or that only the month and day are viewable.) When registering, your
birthdate is asked to verify that you are at least 13 years old and to, according to Facebook,
“make sure you get the right Facebook experience for your age.”

Your Profile
By signing up, you created an account -- you didn’t set up your profile. Your profile, which is
what people can see about you, is still probably blank.
By default, there are some sections that everyone can see, unless you change your settings.
Contact information is available only to your confirmed friends by default. We’ll get more in to
privacy settings later.
 Basic information – variety of information, such as political and religious views,
relationship status – none of these fields are required
 Profile picture
 Relationships – allows you to link to spouse or partner, parents, siblings
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 Likes and interests – your favorites, such as books, movies, music and so on. If you
enter an item, it will automatically link to FB page that represents them.
 Education and work
 Contact information – since you can restrict visibility, you can share here your phone
number, email address(es), screen names.
While including this information is optional, keep in mind that it may be helpful in people
finding you, identifying you, or recognizing you, should you Friend Request them. (More on
friend requests later.)
For assurance that a person is real, Facebook has systems in place to determine fake profiles,
which are not allowed on the site. Facebook may require you to complete the CAPTCHA until
Facebook trusts you are a real person. If you used an authenticated email address when you
registered, such as through a college or workplace email – a specific domain, (e.g. @google.com
or @clemson.edu) then you are automatically authenticated.

The Blue Bar

When people are on Facebook, they’re given away by the dark blue bar at the top of the page.
This bar includes a lot of navigational links worth taking time to explore.
At the time of this writing, Facebook was making a change. If you stay with Facebook, you’ll notice that
the website changes fairly often, but usually to make it more user friendly. As with many things, it
simply takes a little getting used to. When I log in to the Admin site for Ruby Sisson, here’s the Blue Bar:

Starting last week, the Blue Bar is changing, though the transition doesn’t happen for all people’s pages
at a time. Here’s what it is going to:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Facebook logo: serves a couple purposes. It lets you know you’re on Facebook
(obviously) and it also takes you back to the Facebook home page, regardless of where
you are on Facebook.
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2. Search: until you click in it, it says “Search for people, places and things”; you can use
this search to find people, events, groups, what people are saying about a particular
topic and applications; it will autocomplete and if the thing you were seeking shows up,
you can select it from the list.
3. Friend requests: an icon of two people; takes you to pending friend requests; allows you
to find friends; can also change setting here for who can send you friend requests; if you
have a new friend request, a small red number with the number of new requests shows
to the top right of this icon, which will also be lit up (it is not lit up in this diagram); once
viewed, the flag goes away, whether or not you respond to requests.
4. Messages: an icon of two chat bubbles; shows your messages; similar to friend requests,
if you have new messages, a small red flag will appear to tell you the number of new
messages; once you click the flag, you’ll see new messages, and the flag will clear; you
can also create a new message from here.
5. Notifications: icon of the world; if someone does something to your profile, such as
attach your name (tag) you in a photo, written on your wall, commented after you on a
post that you commented on, then you are notified here; as with friend requests and
messages, once you view them, the red box goes away; you can also change your
notification settings from here (such as how you get notifications and what you get
notified about.)
6. Home: works like the Facebook logo, taking you back to screen you see after you log in.
7. Profile picture and your name: takes you to your Facebook profile.
8. Privacy shortcuts: where you can change privacy settings, such as who can see your
stuff, and contact you.
9. Settings: this icon has significant options – account settings, privacy settings, help, and

log out. The icon appears as .

Note: The blue bar is found on the homepage, your profile page, and friends’ profile pages.

Navigating the Home Page

Your homepage has a lot to see! The biggest part is what runs in the middle, which is called the
newsfeed. The newsfeed is your connection to other people’s profiles. You can select if you
want to see “Most Recent” displays, which shows every story of friends’ profiles as they’re
posted, or “Top Stories,” where Facebook chooses stories that it thinks you’ll be interested in.
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Note: There is a way to remove particular posts, updates from particular people, and organize
who you see in the newsfeed.
At the top of the page, you can update your status, as well as upload photos and videos. (More
on how to do that under “Your Profile Page,” below.)
On the left menu on your homepage, you can access your favorites (which include messages,
events and photos), pages and groups of which you are a part, and apps.
On the right menu, you have reminders for events, friends’ birthdays, sponsored ads, (someone
has to pay for Facebook!) and requests.
You can also access who is online so that you can chat through Facebook. (More on that
below.)

Your Profile Page

Your profile page is…yours. As such, you can personalize it with a profile picture and a cover,
and the inclusion (or exclusion) of whatever information that you want. The cover is the larger
photo that appears behind your profile picture.
Status updates allow you to share what you’re doing, photos/videos, or websites you’ve found
interesting. When inserting a website, Facebook will automatically give you thumbnail options
to include, as well as to tag where you are or who you’re with. Unless you change the time of
when you want your status to post, it will happen immediately.
We’ll spend some time looking at a profile page during class, and I would encourage you to take
more time to learn where things are and get more comfortable shortly after attending class.
Again, the biggest thing to remember is that you can include as much or as little information
about yourself as you’d like.
Your profile page is your wall. It’s what friends see first, and where they can leave public
messages. It is both BY you and ABOUT you.
Your profile page shows a timeline of events – status updates you’ve written, photos, wall
messages, as well as a lot of things about you – music you enjoy, places where you’ve been
tagged, your friends, and much more.
When you have put something on Facebook, (either something on your profile page, or a
comment on someone else’s) you are able to remove it. Notice when you move the mouse
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over the thing to remove, you will see an icon of a pencil. Depending on what the item is, you
may be able only to edit or delete, or you may be able to change the date, add location, hide
from the timeline, or delete.

Finding Friends
Remember how you can set a lot of privacy settings for your account? Well, that applies to
everyone else, too. As such, other people’s privacy settings can and will determine if you are
able to find them on Facebook, as well as tell you how much of their profile that you can see.
The amount of their profile that you can see can also change once you are friends.

You can find friends in three ways:

1. Search for friends: using email address or their name typed in to search box at top of
any FB page
2. Import your contacts: usually from email contacts; do this search by typing “Find
Friends” in search box at top of FB page and select first result – you’ll then click the
name of email account you want to use (ex. AOL, Hotmail, etc.) and will then input login
information (name and password for email) – click Find Friends. *Note: FB will not store
password. After FB imports the contacts in your email, you have the option to send a
friend request to those that have a FB account, or for your contacts that don’t have a FB
account, you can send an invitation to join.
3. Invite friends individually: for those that do not have a FB account, you can send a
personal message and invite them to join. FB saves the contacts for you so that you can
see who joined and send reminders

Once a friend request has been sent, they (or you) will be notified that you have a friend
request in the dark blue bar at the top, with a red box beside the icon of the two people. They
(or you) can Confirm the request or select “Not Now.” If you select not now, the request will be
hidden. If you confirm the request, they will be added to your friends, and you will immediately
start receiving their status updates, and they will start seeing yours.
Note: if you ignore the friend request, or later delete a friend, the other person won’t be
notified and will only find out if they notice that you are no longer listed in their friends.
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Privacy
Facebook allows for a huge amount of personal privacy settings. In general, the default settings
are a certain level of openness that most people are comfortable, but it’s always a good idea to
make sure that it matches what you are comfortable with. Before we start talking about the
settings, there are some important things to remember about privacy.
Some things to know/remember:
 Be educated about privacy settings, and specifically YOUR privacy settings.
 Once something is posted, it is owned by Facebook, and even if you delete it, it is “out
there.”
 Be careful about your posts (and videos, etc.) as related to jobs/coworkers – there are
several instances where it has cost someone their job.
 Do not feel obligated to accept all friend requests or give information that you don’t
want to – YOU control the information that you share and with whom you share it with
 You have control of your online identity and it is a reflection of who you are, both
personally and professionally.
 Setting a privacy setting to “Friends of friends” is not much different than allowing
everyone to see it. Not every friend on Facebook could be vouched for the same way
that a real world friend could. The biggest difference between Friends of friends and
Everyone is that web sites and applications aren’t able to access your information under
Friends of friends.

Here’s an example of the dropdown menu you’ll have when select your status update audience:
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Customizing your settings

As mentioned earlier, you can access your privacy and security settings in a few ways, including
through the “Settings” icon or the “Privacy Shortcuts” icon, both located in the top right. We’ll
take time to look at and discuss different settings in class, so that you can feel prepared to set
yours.

Blocking

People: You can block people who are not your friends. Blocking someone means that you will
be as invisible to them as they are to you – you won’t be able to access his/her profile, or see
anything about him/her on the site. The person who does the blocking is the only one who can
unblock it.

Invitations: If you don’t care to get invitations to play certain games, you can block invitations.
You’re still able to interact with the friend that invited you, but you won’t receive application
invites.

Speaking of blocking, one more thing. In order to keep Facebook a (relatively) clean and safe
place, you are encouraged to participate. You are encouraged to report spam, harassment,
inappropriate content, and fake profiles. If you report a picture, you are able to state if you
don’t think it should be on Facebook, if it’s your intellectual property, or if it’s spam. If it’s an
abusive or spam message, go to the conversation, and click “Actions” on the top right, and
select “Report Spam or Abuse.”

After something is reported, the FB User Operations team evaluates it to see if it violates FB’s
Terms of Use. Pornography gets taken down, fake profiles are disabled, and the person(s)
sending spam get warned. Note: You do not always get notified about the User Operations
team decision, but they handle every report.

Customizing

You can customize your different stories, similar to how you share different stories with your
friends than you do your co-workers. It is the same with photos. When you go to post
something, you’ll select Custom, and then you can tell who to share it with, or who not to share
it with. If you’ve created lists, you can pick from those friend lists.

Search engines
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You are able to choose whether a direct link to your page’s timeline comes back as a search
result when people search your name. Public information may still appear in search results.

“To control whether other search engines can link to your timeline:

1. Click in the upper-right corner of any Facebook page and select Privacy Settings
2. Look for the setting Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline? and
click Edit to the far right
3. Make your selection using the check box” 1
1 – Accessed directly from http://www.facebook.com/help/445588775451827#!/help/392235220834308

Tags

When people post pictures that include you, they may “tag” the picture to reflect the names of
people that are in the picture. If you want to be able to review these tags before they appear,
you can! You are able to approve or dismiss a tag that people add to your posts. If this option
is turned on, you will have to approve any tag before it appears. In order to turn the tag review
on:

1. Go to “Account settings.”
2. In left-hand column, click “Timeline and Tagging.”
3. Select “Edit” to the far right of “Review tags friends add to your own posts on
Facebook?”
4. Select “Enabled” from the dropdown menu.

You can also adjust the audience of this post. If you don’t want your post visible to friends of
the person(s) that are tagged, you can adjust this setting, as well. Click on the audience
selector that is next to the story, select “Custom” and uncheck “Friends of those tagged and
event guests box.”

Wait! There’s more! You can turn on timeline review so that you review any photos/posts
you’re tagged in before they’re on your timeline. If you want to select who sees posts that
you’re tagged in after they appear on your timeline, you’ll go to (you probably guessed it!)
“Account Settings.” From the left hand column, click “Timeline and tagging.” Find the Edit to
the far right of “Who can see posts you’ve been tagged in on your timeline?” Select the
audience from the dropdown menu that comes up.

Helpful sites for Facebook privacy:

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https://www.facebook.com/help/325807937506242
http://www.facebook.com/help/445588775451827
http://www.wikihow.com/Manage-Facebook-Privacy-Options

Building Your Profile

Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to update your status. You’ll see a box with the question
“What’s on your mind?” Here, people post all sorts of things – what they’re doing, request
information, (ex. suggestions for dinner/places to stay) or just random observations.
Remember that as you’re posting each status, you have the option to change who can see that
post.

If you post a link, you will see a thumbnail photo of your preview, and often have the
opportunity to change to a different one, or include no thumbnail photo. You can comment on
the link if you’d like, and again, can change who can see the post.

Uploading photos/videos

As with many other things in Facebook, you are able to upload pictures from a few different
places, such as your profile page and your home page. You will click on “Add Photo/Videos”
from your home page or “Photo” from your profile page, which are both found directly above
the box that asks “What’s on your mind?” When you click “Upload photos/videos” or “Create
Photo Album” your computer will pop up a box so that you can select where you’re uploading
them from on your computer (My Pictures, a thumb drive, Desktop, etc.) You can upload
multiple pictures at a time.

You’ll be able to add an album name (required), location (optional), description (optional) and
privacy.

Uploading videos is much the same, selecting from your computer and saving information.
Note that it can take a while to upload videos. If you are experiencing a super long time, you
are able to notify Facebook. As of July 2013, it was something that they were doing more
research on.

Once photos are uploaded, you can tag your friends by holding the mouse over the photo to
tag, and then click on the face of the person you’re tagging. As you start to type the name of
the person, FB will autocomplete. Remember to save your changes when you’re done.

You can also add captions to your photos.

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Help Resources
There are several resources to help you, if you run across any problems, or have further
questions. Facebook itself has a Help Center, found at https://www.facebook.com/help/ or by
clicking the Settings icon (looks like a wrench or sun – far right of the page) and selecting Help.

The Ruby Sisson Library has resources here in the library available for beginning Facebook, for
both individuals and businesses.

 Facebook for Dummies

 Facebook & Twitter for Seniors for Dummies
 Facebook Etiquette & Privacy for Dummies (DVD)

We can also request books from other libraries – just let us know!

If you are a better visual learner, there are also plenty of videos on YouTube for Facebook help.

Congratulations! You’ve completed the Facebook Basics (for Individuals) class. Please
take a few moments to complete the survey. Your feedback is very important to us!