Chapter 14. Facebook Mobile
Facebook can be addictive. If you’re away from a computer and feel the need to check in on your Facebook friends or update your status, you can use Facebook Mobile on your cellphone to stay in the loop. Whether you travel a lot or just like to stay connected when you’re between work and home, Facebook Mobile is a handy way to access Facebook without a computer.
How Facebook Mobile Works
Facebook Mobile is an application (Facebook Applications: An Overview) that lets you use your Internet-ready cellphone to:
Interact with Facebook on your phone’s teensy-tiny screen. Facebook’s Mobile Web feature (Using Facebook Mobile) lets you use the browser on your cellphone to see a scaled-down version of the Facebook Web site. Using your phone’s keypad, you can do things like update your status, find out what your friends are doing, look up peoples’ phone numbers, and keep tabs on the groups and events you’ve signed up for.
Interact with Facebook via text messages. The Mobile Texts feature (Interacting with Facebook via Text Message) lets you do things on Facebook from your phone without having to go through the mobile version of the Facebook Web site. (This option is usually faster than the Mobile Web feature, and is the way to go if your phone doesn’t have a Web browser; you will, of course, need to be able to send text messages.) If you want to write a quickie message on a friend’s wall, for example, you can text message a specific Facebook code (see Interacting with Facebook via Text Message) along with your friend’s name and your message.
Upload photos and video clips. Perfect for posting impromptu additions to groups and events (as well as for tracking project updates), Facebook’s Mobile Uploads feature (Uploading a Picture or Video) lets you sling the media clips you capture with your cameraphone or video phone directly to your Facebook account.
Subscribe to your friends’ mobile uploads. With the Mobile Subscriptions feature (Subscribing to Friends’ Mobile Uploads), you can sign up to have a notification sent to your cellphone when your friends upload new photos and video clips to their Facebook accounts.
Tip
If you own a Blackberry, check out the specially designed Facebook application “Facebook for Blackberry Smartphones”. (See Finding Applications for help finding and installing this application.)
Like all Facebook applications, Facebook Mobile is free to use. But don’t forget that every time you use Facebook Mobile, you’re likely racking up charges on your cellphone bill. If your phone company charges you every time you use your phone to connect to the Web or send a text message, that means you pay every time you access the Facebook site or poke a Face book friend via text message.
Note
Facebook Mobile is great for quickie tasks like looking up profile info, checking event start times, and announcing your status. It’s not so great for text-intensive tasks you occasionally do on Facebook, such as fleshing out your profile or writing a 12-page note.
Setting up Facebook Mobile
Before you can use Facebook Mobile, you have to do a little bit of easy setup. You just need to activate your phone number, and then adjust your mobile settings; the following sections show you how.
Note
Although Facebook Mobile is a Facebook application, you don’t install it the way you do other Facebook applications (Facebook Applications: An Overview). Instead, you have to follow the activation process explained in the next section. After that, Facebook lists Facebook Mobile in your Applications menu.
Activating Your Phone
Activating your phone means associating a cellphone number with your Facebook account, and then testing the connection between your phone and Facebook. To activate your phone:
At the top right of any Facebook screen, click the “account” link. Then, on the page that appears, click the Mobile tab.
On the Mobile tab, type your cellphone number into the Phone Number field. Include your country and area code, but leave out the punctuation, like dashes and parentheses.
From the Carrier drop-down list, choose your cellphone company, and then click the Activate button. Facebook redisplays the Mobile tab, complete with a message letting you know you’ll receive a confirmation code on your phone shortly.
Check your cellphone. It may take a few minutes for the text message with your confirmation code to arrive. If you don’t get a text message from Facebook after 15 minutes or so, hit your browser’s back button and make sure you typed in your cellphone number correctly.
Type your confirmation code into the “Confirmation code” field, and then click Confirm. After you do, Facebook displays a successful activation message across the top of a page you can use to edit your mobile settings. The Mobile application appears in your Applications menu, and you can start interacting with Facebook using your cellphone. It’s a good idea to edit your mobile settings before you get started, though; see the next section for details.
Note
If you don’t see a congratulatory message after you type in your confirmation code, make sure you typed the code correctly (capitalization counts). If you still can’t get it to work, zip to the top of the Mobile page and click the Help link. Then, on the Mobile help page, scroll down to the Troubleshooting portion of the Mobile Web section and click the “This isn’t working on my phone” link. Doing so displays a message with a “here” link; click the link to pop up a message box you can use to contact Facebook for personalized help.
Adjusting Your Settings
You’ll want to adjust your Facebook Mobile settings right after you activate your phone because these settings affect the type, number, and timing of text messages you receive from your Facebook friends. (You may not appreciate getting 50 pokes at 3 a.m. from your cut-up night-owl friend Bob, for example—especially if you have to pay for them.)
To customize your mobile settings:
Head to the “edit mobile settings” page. Facebook automatically displays the page after you finish activating your phone (see Setting up Facebook Mobile). Or, if you surfed away from that page, in the Applications menu, click Mobile; on the Mobile page that appears, click the Edit Mobile Settings button.
Note
The “edit mobile settings” page doesn’t actually say “edit mobile settings” across the top; instead, it just says “Mobile” (which is unfortunate, because all the other pages in the Mobile application say the same thing). You know when you’re looking at the “edit mobile settings” page because you see a bunch of settings you can tweak.
On the “edit mobile settings” page, use the checkboxes, radio buttons, and drop-down lists to tell Facebook what kinds of text messages you want to receive. When you finish, click Save Preferences.
Tip
You can set up more than one cellphone to work with your Facebook account. To do so, scroll down to the My Phone section of the “edit mobile settings” page and click the “manage phones” link. On the page that appears, click the “Add another phone” link, and then follow the activation process explained in Setting up Facebook Mobile.
Using Facebook Mobile
After you’ve activated at least one cellphone and tweaked your mobile settings, you’re ready to use Facebook Mobile. The following sections show you how.
Surfing Facebook from Your Phone
To view and interact with a scaled-down version of Facebook specially designed for cellphones, point your cellphone to the Web site http://m.facebook.com and log in with your regular Facebook login and password. (Exactly how you get to the site depends on the cellphone you’re using; check your phone’s manual for instructions.)
Note
If you own an iPhone, head to the iPhone-optimized version of Facebook at http://iphone.facebook.com.
You can do almost as much on the mobile version of Facebook as you can on the regular version. But the kinds of things you probably want to do (and the things that are easiest to do using the hunt-and-peck method most people employ when using phones as personal computers) include:
Viewing and changing your status
Checking the status of your friends
Searching for people
Tracking your upcoming events
Viewing your news feed
Seeing recent group activity
Interacting with Facebook via Text Message
Many of the quick, basic things you do on Facebook—updating your status, for example, or sending someone a message—can be accomplished more easily by sending a short text message from you cellphone than by using your phone’s screen to browse and interact with the Facebook Mobile Web site.
To text message Facebook, send a message to 32665 (that’s FBOOK for folks who prefer looking at the letters on the keypad, rather than the numbers). Table 14-1 shows you the different things you do on Facebook by text messaging 32665. If what you want to text has something to do with another Facebook member, make sure you type in the person’s full name. (And depending on how common that name is, you might have to jockey with your cellphone a bit to make sure you reach the right person; see Uploading a Picture or Video.)
Note
Texting Facebook isn’t instantaneous: It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for your actions to appear on Facebook. When they do, Facebook text messages you to let you know (if you’ve told it to; see Adjusting Your Settings).
|
Action |
Code |
Text Message Example |
|
Update your status |
@ |
@ at a Halloween party |
|
Search for somebody’s profile info |
srch |
srch john doe |
|
Get somebody’s cell number |
cell |
cell john doe |
|
Send a message to somebody |
msg |
msg john doe how did the interview go? |
|
Poke somebody |
poke |
poke john doe |
|
Post an ultra-silly, cellphone-only “on fire” notification (which, similar to a poke, appears on somebody’s profile), as in “John doe is on fire!” |
fire |
fire john doe |
|
Post on somebody’s wall |
wall |
wall john doe congrats on the new gig |
|
Send a friend request to somebody |
add |
add john doe |
|
Write a note |
note |
note having a great time in vegas |
|
Get help on how to text Facebook |
help |
help |
Note
If there happens to be more than one Facebook member named John Doe (and there almost always is), Facebook text messages you back with a list of people you can choose from to make sure your message reaches the John Doe in Springfield who graduated from Stanford in ’88. Basically, you choose from the list and shoot your message back to Facebook. To learn more about making sure your text message reaches the right person, head to Facebook’s regular Web site, scroll to the bottom of any page and click the Help link, and then choose Mobile.
Uploading a Picture or Video
If you’ve got a cellphone that snaps pictures or shoots video, you can upload your pictures or video clips straight to Facebook—after you do a little setup work. To upload pictures:
Send a sample picture to Facebook. From your cameraphone, send a picture as a multimedia message to [email protected] (exactly how you do this depends on your cellphone). In the subject line of your message, type a caption for your photo.
Note
If you have an old cell phone that doesn’t have MMS (Multimedia Message Service) capability, you may not be able to upload media clips (click the Help link, and then click the Mobile topic for details). If, on the other hand, you have an iPhone, you don’t have to worry about multimedia messages or MMS capability; just send your picture as a regular email.
If this is the first time you’ve uploaded a picture or video clip, wait for your confirmation code, and then type it into Facebook Mobile. After Facebook receives your photo, the site text messages you a code that you need to give to the Facebook Mobile application. To do so: From the Applications menu, choose Mobile. Then, on the Mobile page that appears, scroll down to the Mobile Uploads section and click the “Enter a confirmation code” link. In the “Confirmation code field” that appears, type your code, and then click the Confirm button.
Note
You can enter your confirmation code using either the regular Facebook Web site or the Facebook Mobile site.
If you already know how to create photo albums in Facebook (Sharing Pictures), you might prefer to enter your confirmation code using the Photos application. To do so: On the Add New Photos page (Creating and Filling a Picture Album), click the Mobile Photos tab.
Send more pictures. After you complete step 2 above, you’re good to go: You can upload pictures willy-nilly. The pictures you upload appear in the Mobile Uploads box that Facebook displays on your profile.
To upload video clips:
Find and install the Video application. Flip to Finding Applications for instructions on finding and installing applications.
Upload videos from your phone. Send your video clips as multimedia messages to [email protected]. In the subject line of your message, type a caption for your video clip; in the body of your message, type in a description. The video clips you upload appear in the Mobile Uploads box on your profile.
Note
If this is your first time uploading a media clip, you need to retrieve your confirmation number and type it into Facebook Mobile before you can upload additional clips (see Uploading a Picture or Video).
Subscribing to Friends’ Mobile Uploads
If you’ve got a friend who uploads a lot of pictures or videos from her phone, you can get a quick heads-up on your phone when she does by subscribing to your friend’s mobile updates, like so:
From the Applications menu on the regular Facebook Web site, choose Mobile. Facebook displays the Mobile page.
Note
You can subscribe to your friends’ mobile uploads from the Facebook Mobile site, too.
Scroll to the Mobile Subscriptions section and, in the text field, type your friend’s name. To save you some time, as you type, Facebook pops up a helpful list of suggestions; click your friend’s name to select it. After you choose a name, you’re subscribed. Facebook displays the name below the text field so you can remove it later, if you like.
Note
If, when you subscribe to a friend’s mobile uploads, you see a message saying you can’t get your subscription because texts are turned off, here’s what to do: From the Applications menu, choose Mobile, and then click the Edit Account Settings button. On the page that appears, turn on the “Texts are: On” radio button, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save Preferences.
Deactivating Your Phone
If you change your cellphone number or just change your mind about using Facebook Mobile, you can deactivate the service quickly and easily:
Note
You don’t have to wait until you get back to your computer to deactivate your phone; you can do it right from your phone using the Facebook Mobile site. Either way, simply follow the steps below.
From the Applications menu, choose Mobile. Then, on the Mobile page that appears, choose Account.
Note
Here’s another way to get to the Mobile tab: Head to the top of any Facebook screen and click the “account” link; then, on the page that appears, click the Mobile tab.
On the Mobile tab that appears, find the phone number you want to deactivate and click the “remove” link next to it. In the confirmation box that appears, click the Remove Phone button.
Note
Sometimes cellphone numbers get reassigned, and nothing’s more aggravating than receiving text messages you don’t want (but that you may end up paying for). To stop receiving messages from Facebook, send a text message to 32665 (that’s FBOOK) that includes the word STOP or OFF.
