Thing 8- Facebook

Facebook, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg, was created to map out --on the web-- people’s existing real-life relationships. Although this article is ancient given the speed at which the Web evolves, it’s good background information on this social force du jour.

But you’re eager to get your hands on this phenomenon you’ve heard so much about, right? Since the whole premise (or marketing angle, depending on how cynical you are) of Facebook is that it’s about mapping out your existing social networks, you’re going to have to take the plunge now. Yes, that’s right, the first task in this Thing is to…

Create a Facebook account at http://www.facebook.com/.

If you tried to do this at work, you would notice that your IT department has blocked Facebook. I guess that leads us to either wonder about its educational usefulness or persuade them to unblock it.

If you need help with any aspects of Facebook, try the Facebook tutorials at Expert Village.

Once you have your Facebook account, you’ll need to create a Facebook profile. Facebook profiles are for individuals. Facebook pages are for organizations.

One aspect of Facebook you should notice right away is that Facebook discourages anonymity. Scary? Maybe. You can blog the pros and cons of that later, but if you want the full Facebook experience, surrender to transparency. Or make up a name. Some of you may have full-fledged alter egos already—feel free to use those as well.

As you create your profile, Facebook will ask you if you want to find friends by using your email account. Facebook will ask you to provide your email account password. I strongly advise against this. There are other ways to add friends. As a matter of fact, you can skip all of the steps in the profile setup if you want, as long as you enter your name and secret question. You can always go back and edit your profile information later. The more information you enter about yourself in your profile, the more options Facebook gives you for finding friends. You can automatically find high school or college classmates, former co-workers, etc., if you’ve entered your education and work history into your profile. Even if you don’t enter that information into your profile, you can still perform searches based on that information—the only difference is that you have to enter that information manually every time you search.

Facebook is really not much fun without friends, so go find some friends. You can only see your friends’ profiles, and they’re the only people who can see yours. You can share as much or as little information about yourself as you want. When someone performs a search, only your name, photo (if you upload one) and the networks you belong to will appear in the search results. You can also search for people directly by name and request to be their friend.

In addition to searching for people, you can search for organizations. If you simply type an organization name, like “Dallas Cowboys,” into the search box, and choose to search Facebook, you will get a list of all the different entities with that name in the title. You will find some people named “Dallas Cowboys,” even though this is technically a Facebook no-no. If you limit the search to “Pages,” you’ll find only organizations. Once you track down the organization you had in mind, you can become a fan of that organization. Find at least one organization and become a fan.

The line between Facebook pages and Facebook groups is sometimes a little blurry. If you want a detailed examination of the differences, you can read this article. Otherwise, you can think of a group as a more loosely organized organization than, say, a big corporation like the Dallas Cowboys who would have a page. Some groups are “official,” and some are just people who share a common interest. You can form a group yourself, should you feel the need. Find a group that you can join so you can write about it when you blog.

Add some content for your friends to see on your Facebook Wall. Create one “What’s on your mind” statement. You can even add a Facebook gadget to your igoogle page, but it'll get blocked when you are at school :)

Blog ways you think you might use Facebook in the future.  Feel free to blog any feelings regarding the balance of privacy and transparency, the marketing potential of social connections, conspiracy theories about all the personal information Facebook collects, or anything else that may have popped into your head throughout this experience. What groups (if you don't mind sharing) did you join? Have you been surprised by anyone contacting you out of the blue? Tell us all about your experience hunting down family members, old friends, or co-workers on your blog.