The following was taken from the minutes of the Sioux Falls Senior Computer Center, written by Garth Peterson, secretary.
In the computer classroom, Bill Goebel led a demonstration and discussion of
Facebook. The demonstration showed active Facebook sites belonging to Shirley Bly, Mary Johnson, Bill, and Garth Peterson. Shirley is an experienced Facebook user with a fully developed Facebook site. Her site was very helpful in showing the club members what Facebook can do. Bill and Garth have recently established sites. Mary allowed the club to set up a new site in her name as a demonstration of how to get started in Facebook. A middle initial, middle name, or maiden name used as a middle name can help potential friends find you in Facebook. Shirley includes her maiden name in Facebook. Mary used her middle initial in the classroom demonstration. An e-mail address is needed to have an account in Facebook. E-mail addresses are used for logging in to existing accounts and for inviting persons to become friends in Facebook. Invitations can be sent to people who are already in Facebook or who have not yet joined. An invitation goes as an e-mail message with an embedded link that the recipient can follow to a Web page in Facebook. At this Web page, the recipient can accept the offer of friendship andif necessary begin the sign-up procedure.The homepage
http://www.facebook.com/ provides one place at the top right to log in and another place lower down for signing up. The sign-up procedure begins by getting basic information including name, e-mail address, date of birth, and desired password. (A password that is different from your password for e-mail is recommended.) Then Facebook sends an e-mail message with an embedded link to the specified e-mail address. The new user must receive the e-mail and follow the link to complete the process of signing up. As soon as this is done, the new user should run through the available privacy options. There are many privacy options and most of them have good defaults, but there are some that you may want to change. The date of birth is required infomation, but it can be hidden from other people at Facebook. To hide your date of birth, click on"Info" (beside the word "Wall"), click on "Edit Information" (at theright), and "Basic Information" should appear in expanded form showing details. You can choose to show all of your birthdate (the default), to omit the year, or not to show any part of it .Basic information about people in Facebook is usually available to searches from outside, but this option can be unchecked and probably should be. To turn off this option, hover over "Settings" in the upper left corner of the user homepage, click on "Privacy Settings", click on "Search" on the left side, look for "Create a public searchlisting ...", and uncheck the box at the left.To help friends find friends, Facebook asks for school names and class years for college and high school. However, these data items are not required to be entered. During the process of setting up an account, a new user at some point will be asked to read and type the contents of a CAPTCHA. This is an image that shows a string of distorted letters and sometimes some digits that a person can read and key into a box, but a computer program that is trying to set up accounts on its own cannot handle.The password that is chosen when signing up is not permanent. One of the allowed changes in a user's profile is a new password. Another option allows an account to be deactivated. This option was applied to Mary's account at the end of the meeting since it was setup as a demonstration only. The e-mail address used in Facebook can be an alternative e-mail address rather than a main e-mail address. The alternative e-mail address can be a free Webmail address or a forwarding address. As it happens all four of the participants in the classroom demonstration were using alternative addresses. Most Facebook users put up photographs of themselves at their sites to help others to recognize them. However, a photograph is not required. In Facebook everyone has a "wall". The wall can contain general messages for the friends of a user, a user's most recent opinion about any subject of interest, and photos of interest. Friends can post messages on your wall if you permit this activity.Shirley reported that Facebook also permits private messages. Users in Facebook can set up groups and networks in addition to the relationships created by choosing friends, but the club did not go much into groups and networks at this meeting.
Respectfully submitted by Garth Peterson, Secretary
