In this article, you learn about the Facebook phenomenon, where it came from, and what you can do with it.

What Is Facebook?

Facebook is a social networking website. To flesh out this definition a bit more, it’s an online community—a place where people can meet and interact; swap photos, videos, and other information; and generally connect with friends, family, coworkers, fellow students, fellow hobbyists and enthusiasts, and numerous others in their social network. Facebook connects people within cities or regions, work or school, home or abroad, and so on. Built on an architecture of profile pages that allow individual users to share information about themselves and communicate with others, Facebook seeks to create an environment in which members log in regularly to keep track of what friends and colleagues are doing, share their own activities, interact about interests and hobbies, send messages, and join groups and networks—just to name a few things.

Facebook is fast becoming the most popular social networking site on the Internet, quickly surpassing the previous leader, MySpace, in the number of registered users. Offering free access and dozens of tools for connecting people in social, school, and workplace environments, Facebook has over 200 million active users and is growing, with 100 million logging in daily to use the site. Over 30 million users access Facebook through mobile devices. Perhaps you’re wondering at this point why so many people are flocking to Facebook? That’s easy—it’s incredibly simple to use.

What started out as a college-based social network site, two-thirds of Facebook’s members are now outside of the college startup base and include users of all ages and walks of life. In other words, Facebook isn’t just for college kids anymore. One of the fastest-growing segments of users is the 35–54-year-old crowd. Facebook is also a global phenomenon. Over 40 translations of the site are up and running, with more in development. 70% of users are outside
the U.S., but those numbers are changing as Facebook rapidly catches on in the states.

At its heart, Facebook is all about connecting people with people. Facebook users do a variety of things with the site: track news about friends far and wide; make new friends centered around common interests; share photos, music, links, and videos; organize and invite people to events; play games; spread the word about charities and causes; buy and sell stuff; market products; and much, much more. As a website, Facebook is accessible to all Internet users, where permitted. In addition to connecting people, third-party developers are creating a wide variety of applications—programs that run within the Facebook framework—to entertain and inform. Applications range from the silly to
the serious, and new ones are added each day. What makes Facebook such a huge hit is its features and tools, and the willingness of its users to network with each other in their communities locally and globally.

Facebook History

Social networks have been around for awhile now, and most are focused on connecting friends and colleagues. Bulletin Board Services (BBS) and Usenet groups were examples of early forms of social networks. As the concept evolved, generalized communities, like Geocities and Tripod (back in the mid-1990s), brought people together through chat rooms and forums. Today, social networks are flourishing all over the Web, including the ever-popular MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Some social sites, like Classmates.com, specialize in connecting former schoolmates, whereas
other social sites, such as SixDegrees.com, focus on indirect ties between people. Some sites specialize in niche groups, whereas others aim for more generalized populations of people. Internet business strategies are recognizing the opportunities inherent in social networks and are happy to cater to different groups of people and their networking needs.

So where does Facebook fit in? Facebook is quickly becoming a front runner in the social networking race. Originally called The Facebook, Facebook started out in 2004 as a network geared toward college students at Harvard University. Founded by a computer science major, Mark Zuckerberg, and his roommates, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, the project quickly gained popularity among students. With financing assistance from Eduardo Saverin, the site grew seemingly overnight.

The original idea was based on paper face books commonly used to acquaint students with the campus community, including staff, faculty, and incoming students. Initially, the website was only available to Harvard students, but rapidly expanded to other universities in the Boston, Massachusetts area. Eventually, the concept spread to other universities and high schools, and today, anyone with a valid email address can join the fray. Facebook swiftly became an Internet sensation, and in 2005, the facebook.com domain was purchased and the base of operations moved to
California.

Although the site is free to join, it generates revenue through advertising, including banner ads. New features and updates are added regularly, and the Facebook folks are quick to heed the ideas, wants, and needs of its members. In 2007, the Facebook Platform was launched, allowing a framework for software developers to create applications for the site. Today, tens of thousands of applications are available for Facebook, with more added daily.

Facebook Uses

So what does a Facebook member do on the site? What exactly does the site have to offer? More importantly, what can I get out of the experience? Here’s a list of various activities and pursuits to get you started on the road to answers to those questions: . Connect with people. Connect with friends, family, colleagues, and fellow students. Reconnect with old friends, acquaintances,and family members scattered about the globe. Make new friends who share your interests.

• Keep track of your friends’ activities, while they keep track of yours.
• Share messages, links, photo albums, and video clips.
• Blog with the Facebook Notes feature.
• Organize events and invite friends to parties, concerts, band performances, meetings, and gatherings of all kinds.
• Play games with friends.
• Send virtual gifts, birthday greetings, and other digital objects.
• Join in groups and networks to connect with people sharing similar interests.
• Become a fan of a celebrity, politician, band, television show, or business.
• Buy and sell stuff in the Facebook Marketplace.
• Share a resume, or find an employer or an employee.
• Collaborate on project info at work or school.
• Market yourself, your products, or your company.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s plenty more to do and see, and plenty of people to meet. So what are you waiting for? Log on and start socializing!

Looking at Facebook Pages

The Facebook makers have kept the site fairly simple, which is a major part of its appeal. Naysayers complain that there’s not enough customizing options, but truthfully, most customizing that takes place on personal web pages these days usually ends up making the pages distracting and difficult to follow. Navigationally, Facebook includes a logon page as the starting point for entering the website. After you pass that, you’re presented with a Home page, shown in figure below, and links to your other pages.

Your other pages include your profile page, a Friends page, and your Inbox. You can easily move between pages by clicking the links at the top of the Facebook page located in the blue navigation bar. The left side of the bar has links to your pages, whereas the right side of the bar offers links to settings, logging out, and a search tool.

If you scroll to the bottom of any Facebook page, you’ll find links for advertisers, developers, terms of service, help, and more. Also at the bottom of the Facebook page is an Applications Bar, which stocks shortcut links to your favorite Facebook apps.

The Home page (see picture above) is sort of like Grand Central Station for news about your friends on Facebook. It tracks the ongoing status updates of your friends, published photos and videos, shared links, fan pages they’ve joined, and so forth. All the activities come together on a scrollable page that’s constantly changing (if you refresh the page, that is). The Home page is where you go to see and be seen on Facebook.

As mentioned previously, the focus in Facebook is on profile pages—the place where you add information about yourself to share with others.

Another picture shows an example of a profile page. A typical profile page includes a picture, a status text box so you can let the rest of the Facebook world know what you’re up to or what you’re thinking, a Wall of activities you’re pursuing and communications from friends, and tabs for accessing other pages and features. For example, to add or edit profile information, you can click the Info tab to view your details and make changes.

You can view your friend’s profile pages to check out what they’re doing and what they’re up to on Facebook. The information you see listed on your Facebook pages is always changing based on your activities and the activities of your friends, so be sure to refresh your pages often.

So far, I’ve only described a few of the pages you’ll encounter. There are lots more. Now that you’ve had a brief tour, you’re ready to jump in, right? If you haven’t created an account yet, Next article  “Setting Up a Profile,” shows you how. If you’re already a Facebook member, move onto the other lessons detailing how to use the site and get the most out of your social networking experience. Enjoy!