by Technophobes;the Kicking;Screaming Is This Thing On?: A Computer Handbook for Late Bloomers
Take a peek at the Facebook Account Settings page:
• Take a tour of your Facebook Account Settings.
Be sure to take a peek at the Facebook Privacy Settings page.
Remember that any changes must be followed by clicking on Save Changes. You may need to use the scroll bar to scroll down to reveal that final action choice.
Complete Your Profile
There’s one more task to be completed before you’re ready to search for friends on Facebook.
A profile picture is standard fare on Facebook. From a practical aspect, because there are many people who share the same name, a photo can reveal whether you’ve found the Bob Smith, Juan Alvarez, or Mary McGillicuddy you’re looking for. Is there a good photo of you stored on your computer? If not, you can turn back to the previous chapter and review digital photography, or you can have someone e-mail you a photo of you and then download it (see page 242). If your computer has a webcam, you can take a photo right now. As you can see above, my photo isn’t current, but my smile (granted, I have more teeth now) remains identifiable. Some people use photos of their pets or views from their porches as their profile pictures. Like your notification settings, you can change your profile picture at any time.
CLICK AND GO
Option 1. Click on Browse to find a photo already stored on your computer.
OR
Option 2. Click on Take a Picture to snap a photo with your webcam.
Networking, Here We Come
Once you’re happy with your profile, it’s time to start networking. To become someone’s Facebook friend, an invitation must be sent and accepted. There is no obligation to say yes to someone whose interests you don’t share or with whom you don’t want to share information. You can search for people on Facebook by name, e-mail address, workplace, or school. I’ve reconnected with old friends on Facebook whom I may never see face-to-face again, but it’s fun to catch up on what’s been happening in their lives and see pictures of their families, vacations, artwork, etc. You may want to use Facebook exclusively for your family to view photos and stay in touch. If that’s the case, you’ll decline any invitations to become friends from people who aren’t in your family. You can always send a message explaining your choice to whoever has made overtures. t’s all up to you.
Let’s meet some of the features of Facebook. Feel free to click on any of these elements—it’s the best way to get the lay of the land.
News Feed—Considered the home page of Facebook—here you’ll see all of your friends’ and your status updates, along with birthdays, invitations, and other announcements.
Top Stories— Sorts posts based on an algorithm for what posts are getting the most views and comments.
Recent Stories— Sorts all your friends’ posts in chronological order with the most recent on top.
Messages— This is an internal e-mail service. Messages are seen only by the sender and the recipient(s).
Events— Here is where you can see upcoming birthdays and other events and where you can create an event invitation of your own, if you want to invite all or some of your Facebook friends to something.
Friends— You can see all of your friends here and edit them as you see fit. (That means to add or delete friends. It sounds decidedly unfriendly, but that’s how it works.)
Search—Click in the text box and then type in an individual’s or a business’s name or a keyword and search to see what you can find on Facebook.
Update Status/What’s on Your Mind— Type in whatever you want to share with your friends. You can also add a photo, a link to a webpage, a video, or a question. These updates will appear on your wall and in your friends’ news feeds.
Home— Returns you to the News Feed page.
Profile— Brings you to your wall, where only things you have posted or posts directed specifically to you appear.
Edit My Profile— Click here to make changes or additions to your profile.
Account Settings— This will bring you to where you can change your Facebook settings and log out of Facebook. (Logging out is very important if you’re using a shared or public computer to visit your Facebook account.)
Like— As with friend, the word like has a Facebook-specific meaning. If you click on Like under someone’s posting of a photo, a link, or something they’ve written, you’re letting them know you give it a thumbs up or you agree.
If you’re interested, now’s the time for you to actually get on Facebook, if you haven’t already. Facebook is much easier to understand in practice than in theory. If you’d like to friend me on Facebook, my user name is abbypstokes. When you send me a friend request, include a message letting me know you’ve read this book. In that case, we’ve been through so much together already, I consider us friends.
Come on back to this page when you have the time and energy, and I’ll introduce you to Twitter next.
Let’s Talk Twitter
Merriam-Webster (m-w.com, the company’s website, is a great resource) defines the noun twitter as:
1. a trembling agitation
2. a small tremulous intermittent sound (as of birds)
3. a. a light chattering b. a light silly laugh
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“Tweeting sounded so silly, but now that I’ve joined Twitter, I learn something new every day.”
—Murphy
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As an example, the site gives, “Our grandmother gets all in a twitter if she doesn’t get her weekly phone call right on time.” In my opinion, Merriam-Webster should update the example to: Our grandmother gets all in a twitter trying to figure out Twitter.
The creators of Twitter describe their site as a social networking and microblogging service that allows you to answer the question, “What are you doing?” by sending short text messages called tweets to your friends, or followers. In actuality, people send out tweets on far more than just what they’re doing. Tweets are the entries that you type on Twitter (twitter.com) to share with others. Each entry is limited to no more than 140 characters. The creators of Twitter wanted tweets to be quick, like cell phone texts. The maximum length of a text message is 160 characters; the Twitter design team reduced the number by 20 to accommodate the user name and the colon that appears before every tweet.
You can invite people to view your tweets (people who choose to receive your tweets are known as your “followers”), and you can decide whose tweets you want to read (or “follow”). Twitter is a constantly evolving stream of information similar to the News Feed on Facebook. I follow a wide variety of folks—a few friends and family but mostly news (CNN, NPR, etc.), several bookstores, other authors, and some really helpful computer geeks. Some people like to follow celebrities or their favorite writers. There’s everything under the sun on Twitter for you to search out and discover. I’ll help you get to know Twitter, and then you can decide what’s right for you.
Here’s a look at a Twitter page:
The box below What’s happening? is where you type your tweet. You don’t need to worry about counting characters. The number 140 decreases as you type, to reflect how many characters are still available. Once you’re ready to share your thoughts, simply click Tweet.
• A sample of some tweets on Twitter.
Many tweets include a link. (To review links, refer to page 239.) The use of links explains how the limit of 140 characters doesn’t really limit how much information can be included in a tweet. If you click on the suggested link, it will bring you to a website with more information on the subject tweeted upon.
One of the biggest differences between Facebook and Twitter is that on Twitter you may choose to follow someone who does not follow you, and vice versa. On Facebook only mutual friends see each other’s posts, unless you join a group or a fan page. For me, Twitter is more for information and news gathering or pure entertainment and less for personal sharing than Facebook.
Setting Up Twitter
The steps you take to set up Twitter are much like
those you take for Facebook. You’ll register with the site, choosing a user name and password and giving an e-mail address. All the same rules apply that did with Facebook and Skype. This is another opportunity for you to use your secondary e-mail address (the e-mail address you opened for shopping and newsletters). Do not use the same password you use for any financial transactions. As with Skype and Facebook, your Twitter password needs to be at least six characters and a combination of letters and numbers.
• Here’s where you sign up for Twitter.
• Twitter’s settings page—here’s where you create your profile.
Unlike the world of Facebook, anonymity is not frowned upon on Twitter. I’m not suggesting that you lie about yourself, but Twitter is an environment where one tends to share less personal information than Facebook. I choose to use my real name on all social networking sites because I want people, whether they’ve read this book or want some technology advice, to easily find me. You may want to stay in the shadows a bit more—or not.
Twitter Lingo
Let me introduce you to some lingo specific to Twitter:
Follow—When you follow someone on Twitter, you’ve chosen to see his Tweets or updates on your Twitter page.
Follower—A follower is someone on Twitter who has chosen to add you to the list of people whose tweets she sees on her Twitter page.
Unfollow—To stop following someone on Twitter—his tweets will then no longer show up on your page.
@—The @ sign is used to call out user names in Tweets, like this: “Hello @abbystokes.” When a user name is preceded by the @ sign, you can click on the name and visit the person’s Twitter profile.
Hashtag—The hashtag symbol (#) is used directly before relevant keywords in a tweet to help categorize tweets so they show up more easily in a Twitter Search. If #kiwis appeared in a tweet and you clicked on #kiwis, you would be brought to every recent tweet that contained #kiwis to see what people are saying about kiwis.
Retweet (noun)—A tweet by another tweeter, reposted by someone else.
Retweet (verb)—To retweet, retweeting, retweeted. (Say that five times fast!) When you retweet, you are forwarding another tweet to all of your followers.
RT—Abbreviated version of retweet.
Lists—Lists are used to place individuals on your Twitter account into groups. If you wanted all the op-ed columnists that you follow to be in one group, you would create a list for them.
Mention— When you refer to another tweeter with the @ sign, it is referred to as a mention. Example: “Attended a great lecture @nypl.@jamieoliver was so interesting.”
Message (aka direct message or DM)— A message is a tweet that is private, between only the sender and recipient.
URL— A uniform resource locator (URL) is a web address that points to a specific page on a website. (I normally avoid techspeak, but I had to introduce URL in order for you to grasp a URL shortener, below, which is a really important tool for Twitter. My apologies.)
URL Shortener— Because some website addresses can be long (and Twitter limits us to 140 characters), a URL shortener is used to convert or truncate long URLs into shorter ones. The link http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/dining/grilled-london-broil-try-it-spicy-and-smoky.html?_r=1&hpw is 120 characters in length, but it can be reduced to http://tinyurl.com/3qgmg4s, a mere 26 characters. Tinyurl.com and bitly.com are two common sites where you can shorten a webpage address, but there are others.
Trending Topic— A subject (algorithmically determined) to be one of the most popular on Twitter at the moment. When a certain awards show or a big game is being played on TV, you’ll see hashtags like #oscars or #worldseries trending.
FF— The character sequence #FF stands for Follow Friday. Twitter users often suggest whom others should follow on Fridays by tweeting with the hashtag #FF. Consider it very flattering if someone suggests you for #FF. (See previous page for an explanation of hashtag.)
I don’t expect you to understand everything listed above without a visit to Twitter to see it all in action. Just have the list handy when you go to the site.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the elements on Twitter’s website. Be adventurous and click on anything your heart desires—it’s the best way to learn what the site has to offer.
Search—Click here and type in keywords for what or whom you would like to find.
Home— This will take you back to the home page on Twitter.
Profile— Brings you to your page of tweets, followers, and whom you’re following.
Messages— Here you can read messages that were sent directly to you or write a message privately to someone on Twitter.
Who to Follow— Twitter suggests people you might want to follow based on your activity on the site.
Your User Name— Here you can access your account settings and sign out of Twitter. (Signing out is especially important if you’re using a shared or public computer to visit your Twitter account.)
What’s Happening— This is where you type your tweet of no more than 140 characters.
@Mentions— If someone has mentioned you in a tweet, it will appear here.
Retweets— If someone retweets what you’ve posted, it will appear here.
Searches— Your most recent searches are shown here.
Lists— You can create lists to organize those whom you follow into categories, and this is where you make a list or view existing lists.
Enough already! If you choose to join Twitter, it’s time for you to get your feet wet. As you experiment and have questions, you can always tweet me at twitter.com/abbystokes.
Come back when you’re done playing with Twitter, and we’ll talk a little bit about more social networking, blogging, and online dating.
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“I still don’t understand all the Twitter jargon, but I really enjoy reading my favorite journalists’ tweets.”
—Irwin
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Aren’t There Better Things to Do with My Time?
Absolutely! As my mother would say, “Go outside! It’s a beautiful day. There’s no reason for you to be in the house.”
One of the complaints about Facebook and Twitter is that they can consume an enormous amount of time. Remember, you’re the one who controls how much time you spend on your computer and on any given website. I check out Twitter and Facebook at the beginning and the end of my day—sometimes more often, if I have free time. But I’m the one who decides how much time to spend. If you aren’t the best at time management, limit your visits to Facebook to as long it takes you to drink a cup of coffee, or set a kitchen timer for 15 minutes. After it rings, go do something not computer related. You can always come back for another 15-minute visit when your time allows.
Because It Is Worth Repeating
Do not put anything on any social networking site that you would not feel comfortable having taped to the outside of your front door.
Get Connected with LinkedIn
Of all the social networking sites, LinkedIn (linkedin.com) may be the most practical. As the site says, “Over 100 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities.” LinkedIn is not as social as Facebook or as information based as Twitter. It is really a site for professionals to meet, greet, and see how they can help each other out. If you’re looking to change jobs, hire someone, or even just stay abreast of what’s going on in your field, joining LinkedIn would be a very good idea.
• The LinkedIn page where you can sign up.
LinkedIn’s Setup
Getting started with LinkedIn is almost exactly the same as setting up Twitter and Facebook. You’ll register with the site by providing your e-mail address and choosing a password. All the same rules apply. In this case, however, you may choose to use your work e-mail instead of your personal or secondary e-mail address. Do not choose the same password you use for any financial transactions. Choose a password that’s at least six characters (eight is better) and a combination of letters and
numbers.
The most significant difference between LinkedIn and the other social networking sites will be what you choose to share in your profile. Because of the professional nature of LinkedIn, people tend to share their employment history, education, and whatever other affiliations and associations they have. You can provide quite a lot of detail (although not an unlimited amount) about yourself and your areas of expertise and experience.
Instead of Facebook friends or Twitter followers, LinkedIn is made up of connections. The features offered on LinkedIn’s website reflect the more professional focus of the site.
• Here’s a sample LinkedIn profile. (Full disclosure: That’s my sister.)
Home—Brings you back to your main page on LinkedIn, which summarizes your connections’ recent updates.
Profile— Click here to view and edit your profile. You can also make and request recommendations from here.
Contacts— Here is where you view your existing connections and add more.
Groups— Much like Lists on Twitter, you create Groups to organize your connections into categories.
Jobs— This is where you would go to post or find available jobs.
Inbox— You can receive or send private messages on LinkedIn. Invitations to become connected are also received and responded to here.
Companies— Whatever company you are affiliated with will be listed here, but you can also search for other companies from this tab.
Search— Notice the down arrow next to People. You search, using keywords or names, under any of the categories listed.
Share an update— Here’s where you share your thoughts or activities, as you would on Facebook or Twitter.