Facebook: The Missing Manual (Paperback)

by E. Vander Veer (Author)
Key Phrases: news feed, mobile uploads, confirmation box that appears, Friend List, Facebook Mobile, Exchanging Automatic Updates (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Facebook's popularity is skyrocketing, drawing more than 50 million people to this combination online village green, personal Web site creator, and souped-up address book. But one thing you won't get when signing up is a printed manual. Enter Facebook: The Missing Manual--your witty, authoritative, full-color guide to unlocking everything Facebook can do.

Facebook: The Missing Manual Sneak Preview: Five Tips and Tricks

1. Never check the "Remember me" box when logging onto the site. (Doing so puts your account at unnecessary risk and saves you very little time or effort.)
2. When you register for the site, use your actual birthday so that your friends will get an automatic heads-up a few days before the Big Day (all the better to fete you with).
3. Never add compromising photos or info to your Facebook profile; bosses, teachers, hiring managers, and others can use legitimate means to see your profile *even if* you think you've adjusted your privacy settings to prevent them.
4. If you're on Facebook to find a gig (or a date), be sure to sprinkle keywords liberally in your profile descriptions. Doing so ups the odds of your appearing in other members' searches.
5. Before you fill out your profile, first head to the main menu and click the "privacy" link (little-p) and follow the steps in Chapter 12 of the book to customize who gets to see how much of your personal information.

Product Description
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 upto 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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Pogue Press (January 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596517696
• ISBN-13: 978-0596517694
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,200 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #2 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Software > Business > Utilities
  #20 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Business & Culture > Web Marketing
  #20 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Networking > Networks, Protocols & APIs

• This item is part of The O'Reilly Missing Manuals Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice little primer for Facebook fans, February 12, 2008

By	John A. Suda (Rochester NY) - See all my reviews

The Facebook online social network site has become a phenomenon with over 50 million account holders registered with the "online village." It is easy to open an account and almost immediately set up online relationships with friends, coworkers, and community groups. Like its online rival, MySpace, Facebook's features include easy ways for people and (businesses) to connect via blog features, online groups and networks, photo and video sharing, text messaging and postings, and an elaborate tracking system which stores Facebook's activities and allows access to that data to other FaceBook users and even to others not directly connected with Facebook.

The book, "Facebook: the Missing Manual," is designed primarily for the non-technical computer person who wants to join the fun and business of using Facebook. It is a basic primer describing how to use and enjoy the Facebook features --from registering, setting up a profile, finding and inviting friends to join your personal network, joining groups and networks which share your interests, playing with both silly and serious applications, and using Facebook for business purposes, even for job postings and searching.

The book is a relatively short 268 pages, given its layout of large-sized text, much white space, and the presence of numerous full color screenshots illustrating step-by-step instructions on using Facebook. Geeks and nerds probably will not find much value in this book, but computer neophytes will enjoy its simple, yet comprehensive, approach to its topic.

More importantly, in my view, not just for neophyte users but for many of those already using Facebook, is the books' most useful theme which is learning how to understand the privacy issues involved in using Facebook. Facebook's most salient feature is its activity tracking system which stores data on nearly all Facebook activities and provides ample means of access to that data by other Facebook users, data-mining companies, and even third-party businesses which track off-site consumer activity like shopping, - and up to recently - without a user's active consent .

Once data is entered into a Facebook account, it never disappears, not even after one deactivates the account. For those users comfortable with sharing nearly everything about themselves online - personal information, candid videos and photos, and the like, this state of affairs can have enormous practical consequences either now or later, both good and bad. Facebook's privacy preferences are mostly of the "opt out" nature, so if you don't pay attention to the consequences of even the seemingly most innocuous user configurations--for example, activating any third-party applications no matter how silly, allow the developer full access to your personal data--privacy-related problems can develop.

The book is filled with tips and practical suggestions at every section providing information on what can happen with these your and your friends' data and what steps one can take to protect your privacy expectations. Those tips alone justify the price of the book, for yourself, (or as the case may be), your kids, or grandkids.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, lacking some information, August 13, 2008

By	Matthew Seitz (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought both this and Facebook For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)). This book did include some tips not present in Facebook For Dummies, but didn't have many of the tips found in Facebook For Dummies. I also felt like Facebook For Dummies did a better job of explaining why Facebook does things a certain way, and how the whole system works together. That's probably a result of Facebook For Dummies being written by Facebook insiders, while The Missing Manual was written by outsiders.

Ideally, buy both and get the benefits of both books. But if I had to just have one, I would probably go with Facebook For Dummies.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To find out what your kids are up to (or what you might be missing)..., February 18, 2008

By	Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

So let's say you're someone who hasn't dabbled much in the Web 2.0 world, and you're wondering what all this talk of Facebook is about. Or, you're a parent and you've heard media reports of how dangerous Facebook can be for your kids if they're not careful. If you want to get a overview of the site without getting totally bogged down in the details once you log on, Facebook: The Missing Manual is a good option to pursue. You'll find out the reality of what Facebook offers, why people find it appealing, and what sort of security matters you should keep in mind as you (or your kids) establish a presence there.

Contents:
Part 1 - From Signing Up to Staying Connected: Getting Started; Joining a Network; Finding and Adding Friends; Sending Messages to Friends; Exchanging Automatic Updates
Part 2 - Interest Groups and Shopping: Participating in Groups; Facebook and the Real World - In-person Events; Going Shopping
Part 3 - Doing Business with Facebook: Hiring and Getting Hired; Collaborating on Projects via Facebook; Advertising on Facebook
Part 4 - Privacy and Power Tools: Customizing Facebook and Adding Applications; Playing It Safe - Facebook Privacy; Facebook Mobile
Part 5 - Appendix: Getting Help; Index

The book starts off with the basics... how to sign up, create your identity, and what sort of groups you could join. I immediately learned something in that area when it came to what groups you're allowed to join in terms of locations and schools. I didn't realize there were the restrictions that required you to have an email address from the school you were associating with. There's also the information on how to send messages to others you know on Facebook. All that's pretty basic, and you could likely get most of that from just logging in and going for it. It's when you get to the following parts that you start to see some of the additional power that may not be readily apparent unless you dig deep on your own. For instance, I wasn't aware of being able to place ads, setting up group collaboration, or looking at Facebook as being a portfolio of your work that a prospective employer might see. Probably the most important part of the book is the section on privacy. It's tempting to want to load up all sorts of details on yourself, but it's really not a wise idea. Vander Veer does a good job in outlining where you should be drawing the line, as well as what risks you take by adding Facebook applications or not restricting your profile properly.

While I do have a Facebook presence already, I came away from this book with a greater understanding of how you could use the tool for more than just "poking" your friends. Many of the features of Facebook have stand-alone equivalents (such as blogs, picture storage, etc.), but you may choose to want to keep everything in one single place for easier integration. And if you're the parent who wants to know what your kids are up to, you'll be able to discuss Facebook with them without all the associated hype and hysteria so often present in media reports.

One thing to keep in mind, however... Sites like Facebook change often with little tweaks and new enhancements. While this book will cover the basics well, don't be surprised if there's a new feature that's not covered at all by the time you read it, or if the screen shots don't match exactly. Such is life in the world of Web 2.0.