 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | 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. |
Average Customer Rating:    No inside scoope Mainly the book states quite plainly what one can easily do with Facebook following the prompts online without this book.
I hoped it would have 'insider secrets' -- especially sophisticated ways of connecting with people of common back grounds, expeditious ways ways of moving to a data file the email addresses of one's friends....
It's okay, but I probably will stick with the online advice, which has the same limitations but is far more accessible.
Louie Crew Looking forward to the next edition A friend learned that I'd just joined Facebook and loaned me this book. Of course, within a week of my joining, some aspects of Facebook had changed. And today, as I write this review, I find my home page and profile look completely different. So, did the book help me?
I guess what I'd really like is an online Facebook manual--one that updates every time they update the site. But this book has a second edition coming out in March 2010, so maybe that would solve my problems.
As a Facebook newbie, I simply inserted information into my profile, responded to other people's "stuff" that appeared in my "feed," and wondered how anyone wrote all those articles since all I could see was a status bar rather like Twitter's, or Gather's, or any other ning's.
My usual technique with any kind of software is get comfortable with doing very little then slowly start pushing buttons. The Missing Manual was valuable to me in that it suggested what sort of things I should be able to do, thus encouraging me to click those strange words with a little more confidence that they might do what I wanted.
"Note." That's like a "post," or "article." Okay. That makes sense. And maybe there really is a way to link Facebook to my blog so I don't have to write the same post twice. (Three times if I want to post it on Gather too, but I usually don't.) The Missing Manual didn't give me the right instructions, but it pointed me in the right directions to succeed.
I found Facebook networks after reading the first few chapters, but I couldn't find my local network no matter how hard I tried. Maybe they don't have them anymore, or maybe I'll find them soon just like I found groups, which seemed more useful, maybe. And I almost learned the meaning of pages, even creating my own one to advertize my books. One day I'll figure out how to make it look more professional, and I'll probably use the Missing Manual to help me guess what's possible.
I'm glad I read the manual. I think it's helped me get further, faster, though I still have a long way to go. Facebook's fun, and my friend assures me it's helped her friend to sell her stuff. Anything that helps me sell...
Good Book, fast read! If you have used Facebook, you can skip the first 150 pages. The later chapters are good and needed for a marketing strategy> well organized, fairly thorough on Facebook Facebook is the modern meeting spot for individuals & businesses, it's where people have a simple website about them. This book is the Missing Manual, meaning it tells you what the limited help file on the Facebook site does not. All I found missing was a more in depth discussion of the business side, which is the new growth area.
Facebook, the Missing Manual's author, E.A. VanDeer Veer is a programmer, so I brings a good knowledge of what it takes to talk about the behind the scenes of technology. I liked the table of contents, well broken down, so I could use the book as a resource, and return to it to find a topic. Also, since I work better with illustrations, this book has them, showing what the author is talking about. Helpful.
The book is divided into five major sections:
* From Signing Up to Staying Connected - shows you how to get started, how to join a network, and how stay connected with your friends and associates.
* Interest Groups and Shopping - Here you can learn to meet other people who share your interests, through groups or the Facebook Marketplace.
* Doing Business with Facebook - Facebook provides tools for project collaboration and insights into the marketing power of social networking, book is good at talking about hiring people too.
* Privacy and Power Tools - Here you will find the tools to keep yourself and your children safe. The default privacy settings in Facebook leave you and your information open to anyone who cares to look, including third-party applications that may use your data as they see fit. This section shows you how to opt out of that type of scrutiny.
* Appendix - well organized, and searchable, additional resources here.
I think the reader could be just starting up, or a seasoned Facebook user, for it gives depth to the experience. Seems almost daily, I'm getting an invite to be a Fan of someone, meaning a way of reconnecting with old friends or read what friends i don't talk often to are up to. And since all can post photos, it's like a mini website of your own. Since many no longer like email, or are fearful of privacy issues, Facebook works harder at not having spam. So far, I haven't had any spam from my use.
What I like about the book, it points you in the direction toward new approaches, or features that I didn't use or hadn't figured out how to use. I use the iPhone Facebook app too, it's free and works great.
I liked the book, I just wish it had more about how a business uses Facebook to market itself, that's the way Oprah, computer businesses, art galleries are using it effectively.
Do NOT buy this book: outdated in spades Published in Jan 2008, this book no longer describes Facebook as it has made radical changes to the site recently. The book's pictures of screens and menu items are mostly not there. Should be pulled from circulation. |  |
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