IN THIS CHAPTER

Navigating Facebook

Looking around the Home page

Using Search

Finding those less frequently used links

Here’s the thing about using Facebook: It has a lot of options. Now, this is actually one of the best things about Facebook. You can upload photos, look at photos, chat with a friend, message a friend, read updates from friends … the list goes on and on. What does get a little confusing is that there’s no one way to do anything on Facebook. Depending on the page you’re on, you’ll see slightly different things. Depending on who your friends are, you’ll see slightly different things. Using Facebook can’t exactly be broken down into ten easy steps.

You can learn, however, to recognize a few more constant places. Starting from when you log in, you will always start on your Home page, which is where you’ll find one of Facebook’s most defining features, News Feed. Though News Feed is always different (more on that later) the home page has a few constants that are detailed in this chapter. If you ever find yourself lost on Facebook (it happens; trust me), click the Home link, or the Facebook logo, in the blue bar on top of any page to go to the Home page, where you’ll be able to reorient yourself.

Figure 3-1 shows a sample Home page. This chapter details the elements of the Home page that you're likely to see, too: menus and links to other parts of the site. Some of these links can be found no matter where you are on Facebook, some appear only when you’re on your Home page, and some will be there, well, sometimes. Learning about these links helps you understand how to find your way around Facebook and enables you to work with some of Facebook’s features and options.

Checking Out the Blue Bar on Top

I happen to spend a lot of time in coffee shops working alongside writers, students, businesspeople, and hobbyists — all drinking steamy beverages and manning laptops. I can always tell at a glance when someone is browsing Facebook by the big blue bar across the top of the page. The blue bar is home to many of the important navigational links on Facebook. And anytime you’re looking at a Facebook page, you’ll have the blue bar accompanying you, like a really loyal puppy. Figure 3-2 shows the blue bar.

Here’s what you need to know about the different parts of the blue bar:

• Facebook logo: The “f” Facebook logo on the left of the blue bar serves two purposes. First, it reminds you what website you’re using. Second, no matter where you are on Facebook, if you click this icon, you’re back at the Facebook Home page.

• Search: The big white box next to the Facebook logo is the search box. This text area is where you can type any sort of search query. Simply click that text and start typing what you’re looking for. After you click, Facebook opens a menu with suggested searches. I talk more about how to find people and other Facebook content later in the “Search” section of this chapter.

  The text within the search box will change depending on where you are on Facebook. For example, when you’re on a friend’s Timeline, it will show your friend’s name. When you’re exploring a group, it will show the group’s name. This can help you from getting lost.

• <Your Name> and Profile Picture: If you share a computer with other people, glancing at this link whenever you use Facebook is an easy way to make sure you’re using your Facebook account and not your spouse’s or kid’s account. Clicking this link brings you to your Timeline.
• Home: This link is always there to bring you back to the Home page. When in doubt, just go Home and start over.
• (New Users) Find Friends: If you’re a new user of Facebook or don’t have very many friends, Facebook adds this link to your blue bar to make it as easy as possible for you to go get more friends. Clicking it brings you to the Find Friends page, where you can use Facebook’s various tools for finding and adding your friends. Chapter 8 covers all the ways to find friends.
• Friend Requests: Next to the Home link is an icon of two people, intended to depict friends. Clicking this icon reveals a menu that shows you any pending Friend Requests you may have. Whenever you receive brand-new Friend Requests, a little red number totaling the number of new requests shows up on top of this icon. When you view the new requests, regardless of whether you respond to them, the red flag goes away. Chapter 8 covers sending and receiving Friend Requests in more detail.
• Messages: An icon depicting a speech bubble lets you access a preview of your Messages Inbox. Clicking it shows you snippets from your most recent messages, as well as links to use if you want to send a new message or go to your Inbox. As with the Friend Requests, a little red flag appears to show you how many new messages you have. When you click that flag and view the preview of the new messages, the flag disappears. Chapter 9 covers Facebook Messages.
• Notifications: When someone on Facebook has taken an action that involves you, you’re notified by a red flag on top of the next icon — the globe. Maybe the person has tagged you in a photo, posted to your Timeline, liked a comment you made, or posted something to a group you belong to. Click the globe to scroll through your most recent notifications. You can also click links to change your notification settings or see all your notifications on another page.
• Quick Help: An icon depicting a question mark in a circle marks where you can click if you ever have a question that you need answered. If you ever have a problem and you can’t find the answer in this book, the Quick Help menu and the Help Center are good places to start. Clicking this icon opens a menu of options for you:
  • Help Center: The Help Center is where Facebook maintains various FAQs, video tutorials, and other content to help you use Facebook more confidently. Click this link to be taken there.
  • Search Help: Start typing a question or keyword into this search box to find answers to any Facebook-related questions that may be on your mind. As you type, Facebook will display frequently asked questions that match your search terms. If you see one that looks like your question, click it to see the answer.
  • Help With This Page: Depending on what you are doing when you click the Quick Help icon, you will see different topics displayed in this space. For example, when you’re looking at your profile, you see links to information about topics like adding a cover photo or updating your info. When you’re looking at a group, you see links to information about posting to a group or managing your group.
  • Privacy Checkup: Privacy checkup is a tool that you can use to make sure that your privacy settings are adjusted the way you want them to be. It’s covered in more depth in Chapter 6.
  • Privacy Shortcuts: Privacy shortcuts are links to the most commonly adjusted privacy settings, which allow you to control the answers to three main questions: Who can see my stuff, Who can contact me, and How do I stop someone from bothering me. These questions (and more) are covered in Chapter 6.
  • Support Inbox: The Support Inbox is where you’ll go if you ever have a problem that requires you contacting Facebook’s Help team. Any correspondence with that team will take place in your Support Inbox.
  • Report a Problem: If you ever see something on Facebook you think you shouldn’t (such as harassment or porn), you can go to the help menu and choose to Report a Problem.
• Account menu (down arrow): In this book, I reference the Account menu. That’s the menu that appears when you click this arrow. Here’s a rundown of some of the categories you can find on the Account menu:
  • Your Pages: Chapter 14 shows you how to create a Page, or special profile for businesses or organizations. If you create or manage Pages, you’ll be able to find links to use Facebook on behalf of your Pages from the Account menu. You can also find links to create new Pages or manage your existing Pages.
  • Groups: Chapter 10 explains how to create and use Groups to communicate and share with smaller groups of people within Facebook. The Account menu contains links to create groups, check out your new groups, and manage any groups you have created.
  • Create Fundraiser: We delve into fundraisers in Chapter 12. This is a way for you to raise money for causes near and dear to your heart.
  • Ads: If you create an ad to be shown on Facebook, you’ll find links to manage and create more ads in this menu. If you’re looking to advertise on Facebook, you might want to check out some more specific Dummies books like Facebook Marketing for Dummies.
  • Activity Log: I talk about Activity Log when I talk about privacy in Chapter 6. It’s a way to keep track of all the actions you have taken recently on Facebook and who may be able to see those actions. You can get to your Activity Log from this menu.
  • News Feed Preferences: Your News Feed is a constantly updated list of stories by and about your friends. It’s what you see front and center on your Home page every time you log in to Facebook. In Chapter 4, I talk about how you can influence what you see in News Feed using the News Feed Preferences.
  • Settings: Choosing this brings you to the Settings page, where you can change your name, your email address or password, your mobile information, or the language you want to use on the site. This is also where you go to find privacy settings (detailed in Chapter 6), notification settings, and to deactivate your account.
  • Send Money: Some users see an option to send money. Clicking this link lets you send payments from your debit card directly to a friend. This comes in handy when you owe a friend for the dinner she paid for the other night or your roommate for the monthly cable bill.

  • Log Out: Clicking this ends your Facebook session. If you share your computer with others, always be sure to log out to ensure that another person can’t access your Facebook account.

    If you have the Remember Password option selected when you log in, you won’t ever be logged out until you click Log Out. Remember Password keeps you logged in despite closing the browser; therefore, I recommend using the Remember Password option only on a computer you don't share with others.

Search

Search has become an integral part of using the Internet. It’s the way we find the info we need — whether that’s a business’ address, a person’s contact info, or the year of the great San Francisco earthquake. Facebook’s search is also important, though it works a bit differently from the way a search engine like Google or Bing does.

Most of the time, you will use Search to hop quickly to a friend’s Timeline or to check out a Page you follow. Simply start typing your friend’s name into the search box in the blue bar on top of the page. Facebook displays an auto-complete menu as you type, showing possible matches as you add more and more letters. When you see the name of the person you are looking for, click on her name or picture to go to her Timeline.

Even though the simplest use of Search is what you’ll use most of the time, it’s worth noting that Facebook has an incredible database of information that you can search through at any time. You can search through friends’ posts, photos, and videos simply by entering a search term into the search box. Given the amount of information you might see in your News Feed on any given day, it can be incredibly helpful to search to find that one piece of information you are looking for (I know someone posted a link to the best place to pick apples in the fall, but I can’t remember when …). The search results page allows you to filter for the latest results, or to look only at people, photos, videos, Pages, or places.

The Left-side Menu

The left side of the Facebook Home page is taken up by what Facebook calls the left-side menu. The sidebar is the menu on the left side of the page that provides links to frequently used areas of the site (see Figure 3-3).

The sidebar is divided into a few sections. The top section provides links to your own Timeline, News Feed, and Messenger. You may also see Watch, and Marketplace links here. Watch brings you to a page with original video content. Marketplace brings you to a digital home for buying and selling goods and services. Clicking News Feed when you are already looking at News Feed will refresh the page and possibly display new stories for you to read.

The Shortcuts section provides links to the parts of Facebook you use most. These are often the groups you visit the most often, Pages you manage, and games you play most often. You can edit the order of the items that appear in your Shortcuts section.

The Explore section provides links to other, lesser used parts of Facebook. This includes things like links you’ve saved, friend lists you’ve created, Events, Groups, fundraisers, and any other apps that you use on Facebook.

The Shortcuts section

Facebook adds items to this section as you use Facebook. For example, if you start to spend a lot of time posting and commenting on a particular group, Facebook will automatically add it to your Shortcuts section. Over time, you may wind up with more shortcuts than easily fit in this space, at which point Facebook will choose the five shortcuts you click most often to display, and the rest will be hidden behind a blue “See More” link at the bottom of the Shortcuts section. Click on that link to see a full list of your shortcuts.

In all my time using Facebook, I’ve never found that I needed to adjust the items in the Shortcuts menu, since Facebook automatically adds the links I use most to the top of the shortcuts menu. However, if Facebook’s failed you in this regard, you can choose to pin certain shortcuts to the top of the menu. Pinning is the digital equivalent of keeping something stuck to the top of a list. Facebook also gives you the ability to both hide and unpin shortcuts. When you hide a shortcut, you no longer see it at all in the Shortcuts section. When you pin a shortcut, it stays visible in your side menu. It’s the digital equivalent of pinning a list of your most called phone numbers to a bulletin board. When you unpin a shortcut, it still appears in the Shortcuts section after you click the See More link.

To hide or unpin a link from the Shortcuts section, follow these steps:

1. Hover your mouse over the item you want to remove or unpin.

   An ellipsis icon appears to the right of the link.

2. Click the ellipsis.

   A menu opens just beneath the shortcut. Depending on whether it is a group, Page or game, you may see more than two options, but each item has at least two options: Unpin from Top, and Hide from Shortcuts (see Figure 3-4).

3. Click Hide from Shortcuts or Unpin from Top.

   The menu closes, and the link disappears from the Favorites section.

If you find yourself needing to click the See More link more often than you’d like to get to one of your shortcuts, you may want to pin that shortcut to the top of your Shortcuts section. To pin a shortcut, follow these steps:

1. Click See More at the bottom of the Shortcuts section.

   This expands the Shortcuts section to display your full list of shortcuts.

2. Hover your mouse over the item you want to pin.

   An ellipsis icon appears to the right of the shortcut.

3. Click the ellipsis.

   A menu opens just beneath the shortcut. Depending on whether the shortcut is for a group, Page, or game, you may see more than two options, but every shortcut shows at least two options: Pin to Top, and Hide from Shortcuts.

4. Click Pin to Top.

   The shortcut will immediately appear at the top of your Shortcuts section.

Viewing News Feed

This chapter is about navigating Facebook, which is why the blue bar and the sidebar are so important. At the same time, these menus aren’t really the focus of the Home page. Instead, these menus serve as a bit of a background to the main event in the center of the page: News Feed. As I mention earlier, News Feed is really what you pay attention to when you go to the Home page.

So what is News Feed? Imagine that your morning paper, news show, or radio program included an additional section that featured articles solely about the specific people you know. That’s what News Feed is. As long as the people you know are active on Facebook, you can stay up-to-date with their lives via your News Feed. A friend may post photos from his recent birthday party, another may write a post about her new job, and another may publish a public event for her upcoming art show. These may all show up as stories in your Facebook News Feed. A News Feed bonus: You can often use it to stay up-to-date on current events just by seeing what your friends are talking about or by liking the Pages of real-world news organizations and getting their updates in your News Feed. When there’s unusual weather, I find out about it on Facebook first because I see a flurry of posts asking if that was really hail.

News Feed is possibly one of the best and most interesting things about Facebook, but also one of the hardest to explain. This is because no matter how I describe seeing a photo of my friend and her new baby pop up in my News Feed, it won’t be as exciting as when your friend posts those photos. I do my best to capture at least a bit of this excitement in Chapter 4.

At the very top of News Feed is what’s called the Publisher or share box, shown in Figure 3-5. This box is what you use to add your own content to Facebook: status posts, photos, links to articles you find interesting, and so on. These posts also go into News Feed and may appear in your friends’ News Feeds. Your friends can then comment, like, and generally interact with you about your post. I go into more detail about how to use the Publisher in Chapter 4.

Right On

Much like the left sidebar, the items you see on the right side of the page change depending on how you use Facebook. If you’re a new user, you may see different things than if you have been using Facebook for a long time. People with many friends may see something different than people with fewer friends. Here are some of the items you may see on the right side of your Home page:

• Reminders: You may see reminders for things like upcoming events, friends’ birthdays, or requests you need to respond to.
• Trending: Trending topics shows a taste of what everyone is talking about on Facebook. For example, if everyone is talking about a presidential candidate or a particularly hilarious video of a rat stealing a pizza slice, those topics will appear under the heading of Trending. You can click on any of the trending topics to learn more about them. You can also click to see more or use the filters next to the word Trending to see trending topics in politics (state building icon), science and technology (beaker icon), sports (soccer ball icon), or entertainment (clapperboard icon).
• Ticker: Earlier in this chapter, I mention News Feed and how it is a constantly updated list of posts from your friends and Pages you like. Well, one of the things to know about Facebook is that it isn’t all your friends’ posts. For most people, it would be overwhelming to get an update every time every friend did something on Facebook. News Feed tries to show you the best of the best. Ticker, on the other hand, shows you everything. Ticker itself shows an abbreviated summary of what happened (for example, Juliana likes Martha’s link). You can then hover your mouse over that item to see details about the link Martha shared and who else likes or commented on it.
• Facebook Suggestions: Facebook’s suggestions are generally ways for you to continue to find and interact with people and things you may find interesting. Facebook may suggest people it thinks you would want to add as friends, Pages you might like, groups you might want to join, and so on. These suggestions are based on people, Pages, and groups you already have interacted with.
• Sponsored Ads: Ads on the right side of the page appear in a section labeled “Sponsored.” Facebook is 100% free for you to use, and one of the ways it pays the bills is by selling ads like these.

The Littlest Links

At the very bottom of the rightmost column are a handful of important, but infrequently needed links. These links all appear in grey text.

• English (US): If you signed up for Facebook on a computer in the United States, Facebook defaults to English. If for any reason you want to change the language in which you use Facebook, click the suggested Language links next to English or the + button to open the entire list of language options.
• Privacy: Details the Facebook Data Use Policy, if you’re looking for a little light bedtime reading.
• Terms: This link takes you to a page where you can view all of Facebook’s Terms and Policies, including the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (which you agreed to when you signed up), the Data Policy, and its Community Standards.
• Advertising: Click this link to create or manage ads that you’ve posted to Facebook.
• Ad Choices: Clicking this link brings you to the Facebook Help pages where you can learn more about how Facebook targets ads to you, and what you can do to adjust what ads you see.
• Cookies: Sadly, clicking this link doesn’t make chocolate chip cookies suddenly appear in your hand. Instead, it brings you to a page that explains how Facebook uses web cookies, or stored data on your web browser. Cookies are used on many websites to keep your experience more convenient, and to deliver ads to you.
• More: Clicking this link opens a menu of still more links. Click any of these options to navigate to different parts of Facebook:
  • About: Facebook’s About page is where you can learn more about Facebook’s products, the company, and what it’s been doing in the news lately.
  • Careers: If you’re considering applying for a job at Facebook, check out its careers page first.
  • Create Page: If you want to create a Page for a band, brand, celebrity, or other non-person entity, you can use this link.
  • Create Fundraiser: If you want to create a fundraiser for any sort of cause, you can start from here.
  • Developers: If you are a software engineer looking for ways to build apps that use Facebook, click this link to learn more about the Facebook Platform.
  • Help: A duplicate of the link in your Account menu, this takes you to the Facebook Help Center.
• Chat: At the very bottom of the right side of the Home page, you may see a box that says Chat with a green dot. Clicking on this opens a window where you can quickly send Facebook messages to your friends who are listed in the window. You can turn off Chat by clicking the gear symbol in the upper-right corner of the window and choosing Turn Off Chat. You can always turn it back on by clicking Turn On Chat from the same menu. We go over Chat in Chapter 9.