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. 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.
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.
About the Author
E. A. Vander Veer has authored or edited more than a dozen books to date, including PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual and PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual. Her work has appeared in dozens of on and offline publications, including Byte, The Writer, Salon.com, and CNN.com.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Facebook The Missing Manual:
I was a bit disappointed. Yes, this book sped up my learning curve of the basics (which I would have eventually figured out on my own), but I was looking for more information on specific applications, etc. What I am supposed to do when someone sends me a plant and the rest of the stuff they send me, and ask me to send something back? How do I do that - why would I do that? What does it all mean? That's what I'm looking for.
Great Book for Facebook Newbies, However Those Familiar With Facebook Won't Find Much of Use Within the Pages:
This is a great book for computer beginners and even those yet to or even who have just joined Facebook. It is certainly laid out in a lot more user friendly format than Facebook For Dummies, is easier to read, more colourful (Dummies is black and white on the inside), has better images, has more information (although a lesser word count) and is just a nicer looking book to read or flick through than Dummies. What this book isn't though, is much use to those who have been on a Facebook for much time at... more info
Good, lacking some information:
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... more info
Good book as an Intro or for reference:
Facebook: The Missing Manual by E. A. Vander Veer O'Reilly is on point again with this latest addition to The Missing Manual series. Facebook was started as a collegiate networking site that opened its doors to everyone in September 2006. My experience with social networking
platforms dates back to Friendster.com and the more popular Myspace.com, and I was excited to join Facebook, and did so quickly.
I'm a 'once-a-day' visitor of Myspace.com, and have become quite familiar with how... more info
