1. How to Use Facebook
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Task 1: How to create a Facebook account? .……………………………………………………….. 2
This document is used for Newcastle University Alumni training only.
Task 2: How to update your profile? ……………………..……………………………….…………….. 5
Task 3: How to search & add friends? …………………………………..….………………………….. 6
Task 4: How to post your recent status? …….……………………….……………………………….. 8
Task 5: How to send message to a friend? …………………………………………………………… 9
Appendix I: What else can I do with Facebook? ………………………………….…………. 11
Appendix II: Similar services …………………………………...………………..…………………..... 11
Q: What is Facebook?
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who
work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with
friends, to share links, to share photos and videos of themselves and their
friends and to learn more about the people they meet.
Q: Why use it?
With Facebook, you can:
Find old friends and/or relatives and keep in touch with them.
Make new friends and watch as your friends grow in your profile.
Talk to your friends more often and see what they are doing.
Keep up-to-date on your favorite TV show or stations.
Participate online charity activities, environmental actions. Help
children/disabled people.
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2. Tasks
Task 1: How to create a Facebook account?
Q: Why need an account?
A: An account is a passport to the social network on Facebook and it is your personal
identification which tells your friend who you are.
Essential Reminder about Privacy Protection
Before you start using Facebook, please be aware that the information you published
will be visible for every friends by default. To better protect the personal identification
information and/or sensitive information you may have, you can set the proper
visibility/permission through Facebook privacy settings. Please keep in mind that you
will be responsible for the information you published.
Step 1: Type http://www.facebook.com in the address bar of your browser and
hit Enter.
Step 2: You will see the sign up area in the homepage of Facebook. Please fill
out the form by simply keying in your first name, last name, email address,
new password (for your facebook login), gender and date of birth. Once
getting it done, click the green button “sign up”.
Input your names here
Input your email address
Set your login password
Your gender and date of
birth
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3. Tips:
If you do not like the English version of Facebook, you can easily switch
to another language by clicking a specific language link at the bottom.
Step 3: You will see the security check box. Do not be scared. Just input the
two words appearing above into the box. Please remember to input a space
between the two words. Click “Sign up” once you get it done.
Step 4: You will be asked to input the password of your email account. This
step provides you a fast way to invite friends. You can input your password of
your email account. However, let‟s skip this step and we will talk about it in
the following steps.
Step 5: You will be asked to specify your education history and employer. We
will talk about it in next step.
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4. Step 6: This is the last step before you see your own Facebook homepage. You
can set your profile picture by uploading a photo or taking an instant photo
using your computer camera. You may need to make the photo ready
beforehand if you want to upload a photo.
In this guide, below picture was uploaded as Mr Pear‟s profile picture.
Now you can see your own page of Facebook. There will be one message appearing
on the top. It reminds you to check email sent by Facebook and completes the last
step of sign-up process.
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5. Step 7: Please login your email account in another window. You will see that
email (see the screenshot). Please make sure you clicked the link to finish the
account creation. Once you finish this step, it means you have successfully
opened a Facebook account.
You will receive an email like this.
Task 2: How to update your profile?
Q: Why update your profile?
A: Your profile contains the information about you, like who you are, where you are from,
your favorite music, etc. The more information you provide, the more your friend will
know you, and more friends you may have.
Step 1: Locate and click the link “Edit my profile” which is next to your
profile picture.
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6. Step 2: Follow the instructions to edit your personal information.
Tips:
As mentioned above, the more
information you provide, the
more friends you may have. You
may want to update your
employer, education, personal
interests. Simply click the
navigation links on the left to
switch to different categories.
Task 3: How to search and add friends?
Let us have two practices.
Practice A: Add Johnson John as your friend.
Step 1: Locate the search bar at the top of the page. Type “Johnson John” and
hit ENTER.
Tips: Probably there will be more than one person in the search result. To
quickly find the person, you can input more information about this person in
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7. the search bar, i.e. his employer or university.
Step 2: Find that person and click the button “Add as Friend” in the right side
of his name.
Step 3: Click “Send request” then you just need to wait for approval.
After the request was approved, you will receive a notification which appears
at the top-left corner of your Facebook page.
You will see your friend accepted your request.
Practice B: Add Newcastle University Alumni Association as a friend.
Step 1: Step 1: Locate the search bar at the top of the page. Type “Newcastle
University Alumni Association” and hit ENTER.
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8. Step 2: There will be more than one organisations listed in the result. Please
find the top one, and click the button “Like” in the right side of the
organisation. “Like” has the equivalent function to adding a friend.
Now, you are able to see the recent updates of Newcastle University Alumni
Association in your Facebook homepage.
Task 4: How to post your recent status?
Just one simple step: Locate the status bar under the “News Feed” of
current page. Try to type “This is my first post on Facebook” and click the
blue button “Share”. If it is your first time posting status, you will be
prompted to set privacy. Just click “Continue” to publish this status to all
of your friends.
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9. Tips 1: How to view your friends' recent status?
Once your friend posted a status, you will see it in your Facebook homepage.
This is what your friends will see.
Tips 2: How to leave comment to your friends' status?
When you see friend’s status, you will also see a link underneath the new post. Click
the “Comment” and type your comment words in the box.
Task 5: How to send a message to a friend?
Step 1: Locate the search bar and type the name of your friend. Click the
person you want to send message to from the result list.
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10. Step 2: When you opened his Facebook page, click “Send message”
button in the top-right corner.
Step 3: It is similar to composing an email. Type the subject of this
conversation and the message you want to say in the message box. When
you finished writing, click “Send” button at the lower-right side. Please be
noted that the message will be seen by your friend only.
Tips: If you received a message from a friend, you will see a notification.
You can open it and reply it by typing the message and click “Reply” button.
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11. Appendix I: What else can I do with Facebook?
You can also do the following things (not limit to)
Chat with your online friends instantly, just like chatting with friends via SMS.
Upload photos and share with your friends.
Create and join interest groups, like „Hiking group‟.
Organise events and invite your friends to participate.
Apart from what were mentioned above, you can do many things to help you build
your own online network.
Appendix II: Similar services
There are a number of popular websites which provide the similar services.
Twitter: is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which
offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling
its users to send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are
text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's
profile page.
Twitter: http://twitter.com
Myspace: stylized My_____ and previously MySpace, is a social
networking website. Myspace became the most popular social
networking site in the United States in June 2006. According to
comScore, Myspace was overtaken internationally by its main
competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.
Myspace: http://uk.myspace.com
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