Seniors Site

Facebook 101: Basic Info for Senior Facebookers

Now that you finally gave in to your peer’s constant harassing, you find yourself staring helplessly to your supposedly profile page, not knowing what to do. Honestly, as much as Facebook is fun, it is equally complicated. On average, a person with no Facebook experience whatsoever in the past will spend at least half of the day before he can be left to his own devices. Of course, if you are to observe a child of three, an hour of tinkering would do.

What makes Facebook fun—and complicated—is that it can do more than add friends and post pictures like the old ones do. It can multitask and freakishly enough, it can even suggest friends whom you really know and not just random ones as if it has been stalking you all your life. But, the crowning glory of Facebook, and the most interesting of all, is its live feeds.

Opening a Facebook account is fairly easy. All you need is a valid email address and off you go. Make sure that you are using a VALID email address since Facebook will ask you to confirm via this email address. Now, moving on to the basics..

Since there will be millions upon millions of potential viewers, you might want to consider how much information you are willing to share. When using social networking sites, make sure that your safety and privacy come first. Also, don’t ever post pictures that you might regret seeing in the future since photo theft is very common in Facebook. Keep your private photos, well, private. You don’t need them to be in Facebook anyway. Privacy settings can be adjusted according to levels. It is highly advisable for you to go all “only friends”. This way you won’t risk being viewed by somebody you don’t know.

Search for your friends by doing an advance search. Upon finding them, hit the “Add as Friend” button and wait for their confirmation. You can also browse through your friend’s list for other people of interest. Furthermore, it is not unusual to receive a friend request from someone you don’t know since many online marketers are trying to penetrate Facebook via this route with no apparent success. If this happens to you, just hit the reject button, he won’t find out that you did anyway. If he persists then your last resort would be to block this person from having any connection with you.

Wall posts are those you write in the “what’s on your mind?” box. Be extra careful when posting in this little box since the whole Facebook community will be able to read it. Keep it simple and don’t communicate with someone using this option, instead send them a direct mail or write on their “walls”. Walls are what you see when you hit the profile button. That is your wall.

The first page you will see upon logging in is the live feeds. In this page, you’ll see your friends’ activities such as when they befriended someone or just won the poker game. When you opt to publish an activity, it will also appear on the live feeds, along with many others. Video posting, pictures and even editing your profiles goes straight in that page, notifying your friends of your movements. Speaking of your live feeds, it’s okay to comment on someone else’s activity if you wish to. In an event when a person is already cluttering your live feeds with too many annoying posts, hover your mouse just far opposite of your friend’s name until the “hide” button appears then choose what exactly it is that you want to hide.

Communicating in Facebook is the easiest of all. You can do the wall post from your own to all or directly to your friend’s wall. You can also send direct mails which will land straight to their inboxes and won’t be published to the live feeds or you can chat with them real time. Chatting with your friends in Facebook does not require rocket science, just find the “chat” box below, hit on that and check who’s online. If you don’t feel like chatting right now, choose offline.

It is okay to experience a couple of hit and miss posts. You can remove them from your wall anyway. It can be a bore during your first few days but as your friends increase in number and your live feeds roll like crazy, you will soon find yourself checking your account every hour of the day! Happy Facebooking!