Buy this Book
By E. A. Vander Veer
First Edition
January 2008
Pages: 268
Series: The Missing Manuals
ISBN 10: 0-596-51769-6 |
ISBN 13: 9780596517694
Press Release
(Average of 3 Customer Reviews)
Facebook is the wildly popular, free social networking site that combines the best of blogs, online forums, photo sharing, clever applications, and interaction among friends. The one thing it doesn't have is a user's guide to help you truly take advantage of it. Until now. Facebook: The Missing Manual gives you a crystal clear and entertaining look at everything this fascinating Facebook phenomenon has to offer.
Full Description
Facebook is the wildly popular, free social networking site that combines the best of blogs, online forums, photo sharing, clever applications, and interaction among friends. The one thing it doesn't have is a user's guide to help you truly take advantage of it. Until now. Facebook: The Missing Manual gives you a crystal clear and entertaining look at everything this fascinating Facebook phenomenon has to offer.
Teeming with high-quality color graphics, each page in this Missing Manual is uniquely designed to help you with specific Facebook tasks, such as signing up, networking, shopping, joining groups, finding or filling a job, and a whole lot more. You'll discover how to create your page and make connections with other members in no time -- everybody who went to your school, for example, or those who work at your company or play on your soccer team. Then, bingo! Instant access to the personal and professional details of all the folks you're connected with, the people they're connected with, and so on, and so on.
With Facebook: The Missing Manual, you learn to:
Browse within this book
Teeming with high-quality color graphics, each page in this Missing Manual is uniquely designed to help you with specific Facebook tasks, such as signing up, networking, shopping, joining groups, finding or filling a job, and a whole lot more. You'll discover how to create your page and make connections with other members in no time -- everybody who went to your school, for example, or those who work at your company or play on your soccer team. Then, bingo! Instant access to the personal and professional details of all the folks you're connected with, the people they're connected with, and so on, and so on.
With Facebook: The Missing Manual, you learn to:
- Join a network, whether it's where you went to school, work-related, or based on other interests
- Look up old friends, find new ones, and decide who you'd like to keep track of
- Contact members by virtually poking them, or leaving notes on their message boards
- Get automatic updates from Facebook friends and send updates of your own
- Participate in groups of particular interest and meet up with members face-to-face
- Buy and sell using Facebook's marketplace and classified ads
- Find a job or hire employees by combing through the member pool
- Use Facebook as a collaboration tool to keep team members, co-workers, clients, and projects up to date
- Play it safe by using a multi-pronged approach to ensuring your privacy
Featured customer reviews
If you don't get Facebook, you need this book!, March 25 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
Anthony Garrett-Leverett
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If you love Facebook, Facebook: The Missing Manual is a must have. I'm a 36 year old professional that has hundreds of contacts ranging from kids I coached high school football and basketball for, and the other associates I have met over time as being the president of various organizations. My initial experience using this site was rather frustrating because it was difficult finding people, especially those my age. After a while, I managed to find a couple people, however my experience with Facebook was the equivalent of the large sigh my little doggy does when he is bored.
Then came Facebook: The Missing Manual. Not only did this book give me a better understanding regarding "friends" and "Networks", but it reversed my impression of how useful this site can be. For me two big selling points became very useful for me. The first one is the support for multiple browsers, especially those that are very popular with the OS X operating system. For example, uploading pictures to Facebook was as simple as allowing a Java program (using the Safari browser) from Facebook to work with my iPhoto library. Since I already have my pictures organized in the iPhoto program, it was a matter uploading albums versus individual pictures. This was a huge improvement from other sites you try to upload to. The second point was the mobile phone feature allowing the ability to send notifications and messages from Facebook, and in turn being able to text back in a reply to my messages. Now that may not mean much to you, but the really creative part about it is that you have the ability to control the what and when it comes to receiving messages over your phone.
After reading majority of the chapters, it also brought to my attention how I can export my address book, or create an email list to find individuals I have networked with in the past. By becoming aware of how to utilize and integrate my other forms of networking with Facebook, this allowed me to improve the amount of connections I was able to make by 300%. I also enjoyed the creative ways that the book explained how you can create events, hire, job search, and promote your business. These features are important for me, especially now that I have a DJ business, and a best friend running for political office. I can inform my whole network, and be able to gauge those that will come to an event.
Trial and error are the ways I normally learned, however the time I spent reading this book made me have a better appreciation of what I was using. The book was well balanced using photos and written instructions. A good book to use, especially if you tend to be a kinesthetic or visual type of learner. I'm sure that Facebook will eventually become integrated further with the way we communicate with each other. This book explains the present, and the promise of using this website. I highly recommend the book. For me personally, it was one of the best things I could have read to enhance my life as an IT and volunteering professional. I thought I knew a lot, but I was only using 15 of the features available. Now I utilize about 30, and the time I spend using the site has been cut down in half, but I communicate with people on the site more efficiently by using the tools identified in Facebook: The Missing Manual. It was definitely time well spent reading this book.
The perfect Missing Manual, February 14 2008
Rating:
Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]
This book is a great resource for all those people that are starting to use facebook. It have a very few pages (268), a very larged-sized text and a lot of big colorful images. Probably the geeks and the nerds will have problems with this book, because only speak about the 'user part' of faceboook, and not how to program an application... but is a Facebook - The Missing Manual, not Facebook Hacks. As contents the book is very completed and easy.
In my opinion this is a perfect example of a 'Missing Manual'
Nice little primer for Facebook fans, February 12 2008
Rating:
Submitted by
jsuda
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The Facebook online social network site has become a phenomenon with over 50 million account holders registered with the "online village." It is easy to open an account and almost immediately set up online relationships with friends, coworkers, and community groups. Like its online rival, MySpace, Facebook's features include easy ways for people and (businesses) to connect via blog features, online groups and networks, photo and video sharing, text messaging and postings, and an elaborate tracking system which stores Facebook's activities and allows access to that data to other FaceBook users and even to others not directly connected with Facebook.
The book, "Facebook: the Missing Manual," is designed primarily for the non-technical computer person who wants to join the fun and business of using Facebook. It is a basic primer describing how to use and enjoy the Facebook features --from registering, setting up a profile, finding and inviting friends to join your personal network, joining groups and networks which share your interests, playing with both silly and serious applications, and using Facebook for business purposes, even for job postings and searching.
The book is a relatively short 268 pages, given its layout of large-sized text, much white space, and the presence of numerous full color screenshots illustrating step-by-step instructions on using Facebook. Geeks and nerds probably will not find much value in this book, but computer neophytes will enjoy its simple, yet comprehensive, approach to its topic.
More importantly, in my view, not just for neophyte users but for many of those already using Facebook, is the books' most useful theme which is learning how to understand the privacy issues involved in using Facebook. Facebook's most salient feature is its activity tracking system which stores data on nearly all Facebook activities and provides ample means of access to that data by other Facebook users, data-mining companies, and even third-party businesses which track off-site consumer activity like shopping, – and up to recently – without a user's active consent .
Once data is entered into a Facebook account, it never disappears, not even after one deactivates the account. For those users comfortable with sharing nearly everything about themselves online – personal information, candid videos and photos, and the like, this state of affairs can have enormous practical consequences either now or later, both good and bad. Facebook's privacy preferences are mostly of the "opt out" nature, so if you don't pay attention to the consequences of even the seemingly most innocuous user configurations - for example, activating any third-party applications no matter how silly, allow the developer full access to your personal data - privacy-related problems can develop.
The book is filled with tips and practical suggestions at every section providing information on what can happen with these your and your friends' data and what steps one can take to protect your privacy expectations. Those tips alone justify the price of the book, for yourself, (or as the case may be), your kids, or grandkids.
Media reviews
"One of the beauties of the Missing Manuals is that there is always something new to discover and the research is quite thorough...I kept finding snippets of information, in the way of Tips or Notes, that would give just that bit extra."
-- Graham K. Rogers, Bangkok Post
"I have reviewed quite a number of Missing Manual books and I am always impressed with them. David Pogue is a Mac master and the depth of his knowledge shines through."
-- Roger Bernau, ACT Apple User Group Incorporated
"Facebook: The Missing Manual is a handy reminder of the breadth of content and services available to users of the iconic application, helping the user to explore beyond their usual daily routine. "
-- Imran Ali, Amazon UK
