| Facebook: The Missing Manual | 
 enlarge | Author: E. Vander Veer
Publisher: Pogue Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 27777
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 268
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0596517696
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7
EAN: 9780596517694
ASIN: 0596517696
Publication Date: January 25, 2008
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Amazon.com Review
Facebook's popularity is skyrocketing, drawing more than 50 million people to this combination online village green, personal Web site creator, and souped-up address book. But one thing you won't get when signing up is a printed manual. Enter Facebook: The Missing Manual--your witty, authoritative, full-color guide to unlocking everything Facebook can do. Facebook: The Missing Manual Sneak Preview: Five Tips and Tricks 1. Never check the "Remember me" box when logging onto the site. (Doing so puts your account at unnecessary risk and saves you very little time or effort.)
2. When you register for the site, use your actual birthday so that your friends will get an automatic heads-up a few days before the Big Day (all the better to fete you with).
3. Never add compromising photos or info to your Facebook profile; bosses, teachers, hiring managers, and others can use legitimate means to see your profile *even if* you think you've adjusted your privacy settings to prevent them.
4. If you're on Facebook to find a gig (or a date), be sure to sprinkle keywords liberally in your profile descriptions. Doing so ups the odds of your appearing in other members' searches.
5. Before you fill out your profile, first head to the main menu and click the "privacy" link (little-p) and follow the steps in Chapter 12 of the book to customize who gets to see how much of your personal information.
About the Author E. A. Vander Veer has authored or edited more than a dozen books to date, including PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual and PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual. Her work has appeared in dozens of on and offline publications, including Byte, The Writer, Salon.com, and CNN.com.
Product 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: 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 upto date Play it safe by using a multi-pronged approach to ensuring your privacy Think of Facebook as a 30-million-plus-entry searchable Rolodex on steroids! With help from this guide, you'll quickly get into the Facebook experience without getting in over your head.
Facebook: The Missing Manual Sneak Preview: Five Tips and Tricks
1. Never check the "Remember me" box when logging onto the site. (Doing so puts your account at unnecessary risk and saves you very little time or effort.)
2. When you register for the site, use your actual birthday so that your friends will get an automatic heads-up a few days before the Big Day (all the better to fete you with).
3. Never add compromising photos or info to your Facebook profile; bosses, teachers, hiring managers, and others can use legitimate means to see your profile *even if* you think you've adjusted your privacy settings to prevent them.
4. If you're on Facebook to find a gig (or a date), be sure to sprinkle keywords liberally in your profile descriptions. Doing so ups the odds of your appearing in other members' searches.
5. Before you fill out your profile, first head to the main menu and click the "privacy" link (little-p) and follow the steps in Chapter 12 of the book to customize who gets to see how much of your personal information.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Facebook The Missing Manual October 16, 2008
I was a bit disappointed. Yes, this book sped up my learning curve of the basics (which I would have eventually figured out on my own), but I was looking for more information on specific applications, etc. What I am supposed to do when someone sends me a plant and the rest of the stuff they send me, and ask me to send something back? How do I do that - why would I do that? What does it all mean? That's what I'm looking for.
 Great Book for Facebook Newbies, However Those Familiar With Facebook Won't Find Much of Use Within the Pages September 20, 2008
This is a great book for computer beginners and even those yet to or even who have just joined Facebook. It is certainly laid out in a lot more user friendly format than Facebook For Dummies, is easier to read, more colourful (Dummies is black and white on the inside), has better images, has more information (although a lesser word count) and is just a nicer looking book to read or flick through than Dummies.
What this book isn't though, is much use to those who have been on a Facebook for much time at all. There's really nothing new here that you wouldn't have discovered by clicking around on the site, answering requests from your Facebook friends or following the Facebook prompts for things like adding friends. If you don't know what I'm talking about don't worry, it's all explained in this book.
I am no expert on Facebook, I use it now pretty much to replace e-mail and upload photos but I haven't found one thing in this or Dummies I didn't really know. I didn't find it too daunting to do these tasks without a book such as this and encourage those wanting to use Facebook to just create an account and try it without one of these books. But for those that don't want to do that the Facebook the Missing Manual would be very useful.
This book also gives a bit of history on Facebook, the terminology such as Poke (I had no idea what this was until I read it in the Dummies book a week or so ago). Like Dummies I didn't find this book of much use to me but of the two I think is the better.
Like Dummies though Facebook has upgraded its look since this book was published so the images in here are a bit out of date. You can change your settings on Facebook back to the old look used in this book by clicking on the link up where all your profile/friends etc tabs are. New look has many more features though such as pictures on the normal wall so you'll update soon enough but if you need the tutorial of this book, that's a way to go.
I don't think most people with basic computer use knowledge will need this book but I think it's a great book for those who do.
 Good, lacking some information August 14, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I bought both this and Facebook For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)). This book did include some tips not present in Facebook For Dummies, but didn't have many of the tips found in Facebook For Dummies. I also felt like Facebook For Dummies did a better job of explaining why Facebook does things a certain way, and how the whole system works together. That's probably a result of Facebook For Dummies being written by Facebook insiders, while The Missing Manual was written by outsiders.
Ideally, buy both and get the benefits of both books. But if I had to just have one, I would probably go with Facebook For Dummies.
Good book as an Intro or for reference June 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Facebook: The Missing Manual by E. A. Vander Veer
O'Reilly is on point again with this latest addition to The Missing Manual series.
Facebook was started as a collegiate networking site that opened its doors to everyone in September 2006. My experience with social networking
platforms dates back to Friendster.com and the more popular Myspace.com, and I was excited to join Facebook, and did so quickly.
I'm a 'once-a-day' visitor of Myspace.com, and have become quite familiar with how that network grows, and how to hack profile settings to
customize my experience there. On joining Facebook, I was in less familiar territory, and I was looking to understand the way in which this new site works.
Facebook: The Missing Manual does a nice job explaining to new and experienced users how the site is structured and how to get the most out of Facebook's functionality.
The first four chapters of the book illustrate what I view as basic information about joining the site, finding your online friends, sending messages and joining networks.
This is very useful for the first-time user, but if you are already on the site, I would recommend skimming this section for some of the important safety tips inline with the text.
The next sections of this Missing Manual is where it starts to get interesting to me as a user and as someone interested in promotion and sharing information online.
Step by step, you are shown how to join groups that you are personally interested in, create groups and also how to create individual events that you may choose to invite your friends too. Whether it is a party, a concert, or a pick-up softball game, Facebook makes it easy to invite your friends to the event. Your friends will then be able to R.S.V.P. with ease, and you will easily be able to count out the right number of spoons and bowls for your annual roof deck ice-cream social.
Also explained in these chapters is the Facebook Marketplace' application. This is a way to use Facebook as an alternative to sites such as craigslist.org. I have mixed feelings about the use of this feature, as I personally don't find myself placing ads here, but on the other hand, offering your friends first dibs on a free couch might feel better than giving the couch to a stranger. Again, use of the application is up to you, but if you had any questions about the steps you may need to take, this book is a handy reference. You might also consider placing an ad of looking for employment on the Marketplace application. Facebook makes it easy to put your work experience right on your profile.
On a side-note related to job seekers and job posters out there in the cloud, the book warns that you may wish to be careful what information is on your profile and what pictures you or your friends have posted. We are in a world where your Facebook page is very likely to be under scrutiny by employers after you apply for a job, or by a potential employee. Facebook: The Missing Manual warns that you might want to review your content to ensure it is PG-rated.
When I first joined the site, I found one feature very confusing, and I was so skeptical of it that it took me a while to trust it. Now, after some time, I understand this feature and have gone so far as to delve right in to developing for it. The feature I am referring to is 'Applications.' Facebook made another smart move by opening its doors to programmers and developers, whom were able to create small programs to the site. Facebook developers are making custom applications to promote brands and services, but also, most of the applications are for fun! Scrabulous is a popular application for playing Scrabble online against your friends, there are countless other games to choose from, and the community of developers are only constrained by their imagination to come up with new uses of Facebook daily. Facebook allows the user to decide what information the application makers have access too, so I would caution users of the site to carefully read the warnings that you are prompted with when agreeing to add the application.
Facebook: The Missing Manual has, throughout the book, warnings about privacy and protecting your information. This topic is directly related to the application feature, and is covered much in the chapter related to the feature.
This well-written book is a must-have for parents curious about the safety features of Facebook, for beginning to intermediate users of the site, and also for people who may wish to use the site as the representative of a business or group. Facebook has many unique features, such as 'poking', and you will find terms and good practices illustrated in this book with clear screen-shots and clever, oft-times funny text to use as a reference to getting the most out of this popular social networking website that has caught on rather quickly and is developing more features each day.
Realistically, I can imagine that the next print edition of the book may need to be updated, as this is the nature of writing on the social networking online experience.
Useful information about Facebook for newbies and the longtimers alike May 6, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have been a Facebook user since 2005, when the social network was limited only to college kids (I worked in a college: I was not a college student at the time). Seeing it evolve as it has in recent months has been a pleasant thing as it has allowed me to reconnect with old friends that I had effectively lost touch with.
As a longtime user, I thought I knew most of what Facebook had to offer, but this Missing Manual proved that there was lots more that I had no clue about. I was unaware of the ability to sell things through Facebook, for instance and, also, I was not as clear about the multiple options available for advertisers (though I found the chapter dedicated to this topic a bit limited).
I liked that the book was not all praise about the platform: there is clear recognition about the areas that are still confusing and the use of certain names (such as "Pages") for things that could have been named more intuitively.
Last, there were an excellent couple of chapters devoted to Privacy and Facebook Mobile (for sure a dimension of the social network that we will see grow in the coming months and years). Overall, the book was a pleasantly useful resource that I highly recommend to anyone who is starting out with Facebook and longtime users alike.
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