Group Messages

You can message more than one person at a time. Doing so creates a new conversation among all the people you message. Everyone can see and reply to the message. So if you send a message to Mike, Jenny, and Steve, a new conversation is created. When you’re looking at that conversation, you can see all the messages that have been sent by all the people involved. As you’re reading, you can see who said what by looking at the names and profile pictures identifying each message. Each message is separated and has a timestamp so that you can see when it was sent.

The main thing to remember about group conversations is that you cannot reply individually to members of the conversation. When you reply, all members of the conversation see your reply. If you are in multiple conversations with some of the same people, double check to make sure you’re in the right conversation before hitting reply!

Group messages have some specific options, like removing yourself from a conversation and naming a conversation, that are covered in the Message Options section.

Sending links

If you want to add a link to a website or article to a message, you can copy and paste it into the message box. Facebook then generates a preview of the article so that your friend has more info before clicking the link. You can remove this preview by clicking the X in the upper-right corner of the preview. If you ever choose to share a link from another website (many news sites have links to share articles, for example) you can select to share it in a private message and accomplish the same thing: sending the link and a preview to a friend, as well as explaining why you are sending it.

Much like when you create a post, you can make your messages a little less messy by only sending the preview without sending a long, unwieldy URL. Once you can see the preview, simply delete the actual URL from your message. Your friend will be able to click through on the preview alone.

Sending photos

To add photos to your message, click the picture icon (it looks like a framed picture of a mountain) at the bottom of the chat window. Doing so opens an interface for navigating your computer’s hard drive, so make sure you know where your photo is saved. If you want to share a photo that is already on Facebook, the easiest way to share it is to navigate to that photo, click the share link at the bottom of the photo, and choose to share it in a private message.

If you’re sharing a photo that is on Facebook, privacy rules may sometimes prevent your friend from being able to see it.

Sending stickers

Stickers on Facebook are a lot like the stickers you might have once used to adorn a school notebook or a letter from summer camp, except, you know, digital. There are virtually infinite sticker options you can send to friends, from smiley faces to ones related to various holidays to ones created by specific artists.

Clicking on the square Smiley icon at the bottom of a chat window opens the Search Stickers menu, shown in Figure 9-3.

You can browse through the various categories of stickers here. Click a category name to see stickers in that category, then scroll down to see the full collection. As soon as you click on a sticker, it is sent to your friend.

Along the top of the Search Stickers menu are recently used sticker collections you have used. You can also click on the plus sign here to go to the sticker store. In the sticker store you can browse through sticker options and choose to add them to your personal collections. After you have added a sticker collection (by clicking the green Free button), close the sticker store by clicking the X in the upper-right corner. Then, when you reopen the Search Stickers menu, you’ll see your new sticker pack along the top of the menu.

Sending GIFs

A GIF is a file format that supports animated images. But when people talk about GIFs, they are usually referring to how GIFs are used on the Internet: as ways to share a clip, usually on a loop, that captures a moment, emotion, or thought. So, for example, if someone tells you something that exasperates you, you could send a GIF of a famous person rolling his eyes to communicate that you are, in fact, rolling your eyes as well.

You can click on the GIF icon at the bottom of the chat menu to browse through GIFs that you can send to a friend. By default, Facebook shows you trending GIFs (in other words, GIFs that other people have been sending). You can search for the type of GIF you are looking for using the Search box at the top of the GIF menu. As soon as you click on a GIF it is sent to your friend.

Sending Emojis

Emojis are small digital images that express an emotion or idea. The most common emojis are the yellow smiley (or frowny or crying) faces. You can select from a multitude of emojis on Facebook, ranging from the usual smileys to specific foods, locations, or modes of transportation.

To choose an emoji, click the round Smiley icon in the bottom of the chat window. This opens a menu for browsing emoji. Click on the one you want to add to any text you have written. Unlike stickers and GIFs, emojis get added within your text, so you will need to press Enter to send them.

Sending payments

You can use Facebook to send money to friends. It requires both you and your friends to enter debit card info into Facebook, which it stores securely in its systems. Facebook does not charge a fee to send payments between friends.

If you’ve never sent money before, follow these steps the first time you want to send money to a friend:

1. Tap the $ icon in the bottom of a chat window with your friend.

   A payment interface appears, shown in Figure 9-4.

2. Type the amount of money you want to send into the payment field.
3. (Optional) Type in the reason for the payment in the “What is this payment for?” field.

4. Click the Next button.

   A window opens for entering your debit card info for making the payment.

5. Enter your debit card info into the relevant fields.

6. Click the Pay button.

   The money has been sent to your friend. He will need to enter a debit card into Facebook to receive the money.

Payments only work with debit cards. Using debit cards allows you to pay directly from your bank account and allows your friend to put money directly in her bank account. Make sure that when you enter your card info, it is for a debit card, not a credit card.

Once you send money, you can’t cancel the payment. Be sure that you are okay with the money leaving your account before you click the Pay button.

If you’d like to add extra security around payments, check out the Payments section of the Settings page.

Sending attachments

Much as it does in many email programs, an icon shaped like a paperclip signifies attaching files to a message. Clicking the attachment icon opens an interface for searching and selecting files from your computer’s hard drive. You can attach photos, videos, documents, and so on.

Playing games

Games are more fun with friends. That’s pretty much true in real life, and it’s true online. Facebook is one way for people to connect with real-life friends to play games online. Click the Games icon (it’s shaped like a video game controller) to open a menu of games that you can choose to play against (or with) the friend you are messaging. These games usually have not been built by Facebook, so by using them you are technically sharing some basic information (like your name and friend list) with third-party developers. You can learn more about using your Facebook information with third party applications in Chapter 15. Click the Play button next to the game you want to play. Once you’ve played a round, your friend will be sent a challenge.

Many games are optimized for mobile phones, so they might look a little weird if you’re playing them on your desktop or laptop computer. Try playing from your phone sometime!

Taking photos to send

The Camera icon at the bottom of the chat window opens an interface for taking photos with your computer’s built-in webcam (or, if you’re using Messenger on your phone, it connects to your phone’s camera). You may need to approve the use of your webcam or install a driver to your computer to access this feature.

When you look at a preview of yourself on the screen, click the green Take Photo button to take your photo. If you like it, click the blue Send button to send it to your friend.

The Facebook Like

The last icon you see in the composer section of the chat window is a thumbs-up icon, also known as the Like icon. You can click this icon to send a thumbs-up icon to your friend at any time.

Add friends

The plus sign icon allows you to add more friends to a conversation you are having with a friend. Click this to open a text field where you can enter a friend’s name. Remember to click the Done button when you have finished adding names. This opens a new conversation among all of you and will appear as a separate conversation in your Recent Messages.

Start video/voice call

Assuming your computer is up to the task, you can click on the video camera icon or the phone icon to start a video or voice call, respectively, with your friend (or with multiple friends).

The first time you use either of these features, you may have to set up video calling, which may include installing Flash or another driver to your computer’s hard drive.

When you initiate a video call, a pop-up window opens on your screen. Your friend will see something similar appear on her screen asking if she wants to accept a video or voice call. If she wants to take the call, she simply clicks accept and the two of you will be able to speak face to face (or voice to voice).

Video and voice calls can also be made from smartphones using the Facebook Messenger app. You can learn more about Facebook’s suite of apps for phones in Chapter 7.

Video calls assume both people have webcams either built-in or installed in their computers. If you don’t have a webcam, you won’t be able to make video calls.

Options

Click the gear icon to view a full menu of options related to your conversation. Some of these options only appear in conversations with one friend (I’ve added a 1-1 note to those) and some only appear for group conversations. Most, however, appear for one-on-one and group threads alike:

• Open in Messenger: Selecting this option opens Messenger, the Facebook equivalent of your Inbox. Here you will be able to view the entire conversation and search it. More details about Messenger/Inbox can be found in the next section.
• Add Files: Just like clicking the paperclip icon at the bottom of a chat window when you’re sending a message from the Inbox, you can select this option to search your computer for files you want to share.
• Add Friends to Chat: If you’re discussing something with a friend and think that you need the opinion of someone else, you can add her to the chat, which opens a new group chat window.
• Turn off Chat for <Friend> (1-1): Friends may be more likely to chat with you when they see that you’re online. If any friend is popping up a little too often, you can turn off chat for that individual person. From that point on, she will no longer see you in the Chat menu.
• Edit Conversation Name (group): You may want to give conversations amongst friends a helpful nickname like “Vacation Planning” or “Dummies.” Select this option and a small text field appears at the top of the chat window. Enter the new name of your conversation there and press Enter.
• Edit Participants (group): Everyone within a group message has the same ability to add and remove participants from the message. Removing someone does not prevent someone from being re-added by another member of the conversation, nor does it stop that person from starting a new thread with all the same people. However, if there is a legitimate need to remove someone from a conversation, click this option and select their name from the list of names that appears.
• Edit Nicknames: Often most helpful in group message threads, nicknames allow you to make sure everyone in the conversation knows who is speaking, especially if people use a variant of their name as their Facebook name. Clicking this option opens a pop-up window with a list of every participant’s name. Click on the name you want to add a nickname for, type in the nickname you want to use, and click Save. Keep in mind that all members of the conversation will see this nickname, so be nice!
• Change Color: If you have multiple conversations happening at once, you might find it convenient to change the color of the word bubbles within the conversation. Once you click this option, a pop-up window opens with color options. Click the color you like to select it. Facebook will change the color for all participants in the thread.
• Mute Conversation: Muting a conversation allows you to stop receiving notifications (such as a flashing chat bar or a red bubble in the big blue bar on top) for a particular conversation. Selecting this option allows you to choose how long you want a conversation to be muted for. It can be as short as thirty minutes or as long as forever. I’ve found muting particularly helpful with group conversations, where I want to be able to view the thread when it’s convenient to me, but don’t want to be distracted by a million people replying all at once.
• Delete Conversation: Deleting a conversation is permanent. It deletes the entire history of your messages with a friend. Keep in mind that deleting it only deletes it for you. Your friend (or friends) will still be able to see the message history.
• Leave Conversation (group): Another option for a group conversation you don’t want to be a part of is simply to leave the conversation. Leaving a conversation posts a small notice to the rest of the members that you have left.
• Start Plan: When you are messaging back and forth with friends, you may notice that whenever you use certain time-based words like “tonight” or “Wednesday” Facebook displays a little link prompting you to “Start Plan.” Clicking that link, or this option in the menu, allows you to create a quick event with info like date, time, and place, as shown in Figure 9-5. All members of the thread can then see the plan, RSVP, and change the plan if needed. Facebook will automatically send everyone in the group message a reminder about the plan about an hour before it begins.
• Ignore Messages (1-1): Ignoring messages is a variant on muting messages from a particular friend. If you choose this option, Facebook will begin to treat the messages from that friend as if they are messages from a stranger. They’ll show up in the Message Requests section of your Inbox instead of the main section of your Inbox. Your friend won’t be told that you’ve ignored their messages.
• Block Messages (1-1): You can prevent someone from sending you messages entirely by choosing to block messages from her. If people are harassing you on Facebook, you might also consider blocking them entirely or reporting them for harassment.
• Report: If you’re getting odd messages from a friend promoting something he wouldn’t normally promote, there’s a chance his account was phished, meaning someone who shouldn't have gained access to it. Report the spam messages to protect yourself, your friend, and other users from having the same thing happen to them. You can also report messages for being harassing or hateful. If you are reporting those actions, you may also want to consider blocking the person sending the hateful content to you.
• Create Group (group): Groups are a Facebook feature that allows, well, groups of people to congregate and share information around a specific topic. If you come to realize that a group of people you are often messaging together would benefit from a space on Facebook to share posts with one another, use this option to create that group. You can learn more about what to do with groups in Chapter 10.
• Create Event (group): Events are a Facebook feature that allows you to plan and create an event and invite your friends. If you want, you can use this option to create an event with members of a certain group conversation as the guest list. You can learn more about events in Chapter 13.

X

Clicking the X in the upper-right corner of your chat window closes the chat. Remember, everything you’ve said remains saved in your message history, so never worry about closing a window.

Connection requests

Whenever you get a message from someone you aren’t friends with yet, these go to a section of your Inbox labeled Connection Requests. When you get a new one, you’ll see a bold preview in your list of messages, which you can click to view the message. You can also view your history of connection requests by clicking the gear icon in the upper-left corner of the Messenger Inbox and selecting Connection Requests from the menu that opens.

You can choose to Accept or Decline connection requests from people. Often a connection request is a person you know simply verifying that you know each other. Once you accept the request, you can write back, and that conversation then appears in the main section of your Messenger Inbox. If you choose to decline a connection request, that person is not notified, but the message from them will be permanently deleted from Messenger. You can also choose to leave connection requests in a sort of limbo, where you neither respond, accept, nor decline the request. It will just hang around in the connection requests section of your Inbox gathering dust until you are ready to do something with it.

Conversations in the Inbox

The center portion of the Messenger Inbox is dedicated to whichever conversation you have selected to look at. The most important thing to notice is that all the content here is the same content you would see in a chat window. Facebook doesn’t care where you wrote a message from, all of it goes into your message history. The most recent message is on the bottom of the page. Scroll up to see older messages. This should look like the same conversation in a chat window, just a bit bigger.

At the bottom of your conversation, below the most recent message, is the message composer. The message composer is similar to the one you use in the chat window. Simply type your response and press Enter to send. You can click the icons for sending photos, stickers, gifs, emojis, money, photos from your webcam, or likes.

One additional option you have from the composer is a microphone icon for recording voice messages to send to friends. Click the microphone icon then click the big red Record button to start recording your message. Click it again when you’re done to send it. You won’t have a chance to review your recording before it gets sent.

To the right of your conversation is info about the person (or people) you are talking to, as well as options related to that conversation. There is also a space where photos you have shared recently in the conversation are displayed. Some of the options, like Edit Nicknames and Change Color are the same as the options available to you when you’re using a chat window while browsing Facebook. The new options are:

• Search in Conversation: Because Facebook messages aren’t broken into discreet emails with unique subjects, trying to scroll through a long message thread to find information like where you guys were supposed to meet or the name of so-and-so’s new boyfriend can be challenging. You can use search to try and find this type of information. Clicking Search in Conversation opens a search box at the top of the message thread. Simply type in the term you are searching for and press Enter. Facebook displays any results highlighted with the messages that were sent immediately before and after that term was used. Use the arrows next to the search box to flip to the next occurrence of that term. When you’re done using Search, click the Done button to the right of the search box to return to the entire conversation.
• Change Emoji: Use this to choose an emoji to be the default emoji in the bottom right of the chat window. It will replace the Like emoji that is currently there. Everyone in the conversation will see that you’ve chosen a new emoji and be able to send it with just one click whenever they want.
• Notifications: You can choose whether you receive notifications when you get a new message within a given conversation. You can also choose whether you get notifications when someone reacts (that is, likes or clicks another reaction icon) to something you said.

Settings

Once you are in the Messenger Inbox, you can go to other sections of the Inbox and access your settings by clicking the gear icon in the upper-left corner. This opens a menu with the following options:

• Settings: Open a pop-up window to access a few settings and links that may be helpful to you as you use Messenger. You can toggle your online status on and off, enable and disable sounds, and enable and disable desktop notifications that appear even if Facebook isn’t open in your browser. You will also find links to manage your Payments and Blocking settings. This is yet another place where you can choose your emoji’s skin color.
• Active Contacts: View a list of all your friends who are currently active on Facebook.
• Connection Requests: View all your connection requests that you have not responded to yet.
• Archived Threads: View conversations you have archived.
• Unread Threads: View only conversations with unread messages.
• Help: Go to the Facebook Help Center.
• Report a problem: If something is behaving wonkily, report it to Facebook so they know there’s something wrong.