How to use Facebook isn't as easy as it seems. Many people are too embarrassed to admit they barely know how to use Facebook. They remain puzzled after getting past the Facebook login and stare at the publisher or Facebook status box that asks, "What's on your mind?"
Most Facebook users, even newbies, know that box is where you type in status messages and upload photos to share with friends--and that the content below it is their "news feed."
But a surprising number don't know the differences between their home, profile and timeline pages, or the "news feed" and "wall" appearing on those pages. Since the power of Facebook's publishing tools rests in such nuances, it's worth taking time to understand them.
Need-to-know basics include figuring out where your messages show up for others and determining who can see which parts of your Facebook activity. Facebook modifies its toolkit fairly often, but most core functions persist. And once you understand how Facebook's core features operate, you should find Facebook a livelier, friendlier place.
Facebook's Key Features and What They Do
The heart and soul of Facebook lie in seven core features:- Friends--your list of friends, those with whom you've connected.
- Publisher box--the blank "status" box for typing in text updates, sharing Web links and other media.
- Home page & News Feed--the page you see after logging in; it displays a "News Feed" of updates about what your friends are saying and doing on Facebook in the middle column.
- News Ticker--the real-time feed of actions your friends are taking on Facebook that appears in a small scrolling box in the right sidebar of your Facebook page. It was introduced in mid-2011.
- Timeline/Profile/Wall--the page you see if you click your name at the right top your Facebook home page; it displays your personalized "Wall" of content in a chronological Timeline in the middle column. When you visit a friend's page, their profile page/timeline is what you see. Facebook changed the name and function of this feature in 2011, renaming the old "profile" page and "Wall" to "Timeline." The Timeline is basically the same as your Wall.
- Bio--info about you that displays on your profile page/Timeline when you (or a friend) click the "Info" tab on the left sidebar. A short summary appears by default, clicking "info" displays the full bio.
- Privacy settings--used to determine who can see your status updates and personal info. Access them by clicking the down arrow to the right of the "Home" button in the top blue horizontal bar. You should make sure your privacy default is set to "Friends" and not "Public." You can also use the audience selector button beneath the status update box to set different sharing/viewing options for each piece of content you post.
News Feed is About Friends; Timeline is about You
The key is to understand what you are looking at when you view your home page and your profile/Timeline pages. The home page News Feed is all about your friends and what they're doing; your profile page's Timeline/Wall content is all about you. That's one thing that tends to trip up newbie Facebook users--not understanding the differences between what gets displayed in each area.
Your Private, Personalized News Feed on Facebook
The News Feed on your home page is hard to miss, it appears smack in the center column. This stream of updates posted by your Facebook friends is personalized for you; no one else can see it. By default it's private and that default can't be changed. That is different from the updates and other content posted to your Timeline/Wall, which are meant for viewing by other people. You have the option to make your Timeline content viewable to just your friends, only you, the general public or a customized list of people.
News Feed Viewing Options:New users often have trouble understanding their limited, confusing options for changing or influencing what's shown in their personalized News Feed on their home page. Until fall 2011, there were two entirely different content streams you could view on your home page; you simply toggled between them by clicking the "Top News" and "Most Recent" buttons.
"Most Recent" displayed ALL available content about your friends. "Top News" showed a limited subset selected by the secret Facebook formula that attempts to judge what you're going to like most by counting "likes" and comments from other users. You also could filter your News Feed to look at only status updates, say, or to see messages only from a Facebook Group you joined.
News Feed Redesign in 2011: But in the fall of 2011, Facebook moved the "display all content" option into a separate right-hand sidebar ticker that now scrolls down your page in real time, showing everything your friends are doing as they are doing it. The "News Feed" (controlled partly by a popularity algorithm) remains in the central column of your home page, and now you can't sort that feed by the type of items posted.
But you can still sort the News Feed by whether you want updates from your friends that were posted since the last time you logged to appear at the top of the feed. That option is called "highlighted stories." Your other sorting option is called "recent stories first," and it places updates from your friends in chronological order with the most recent at the top. Be advised, though, that a secret sorting algorithm still affects what gets shown; the formula weighs such factors as how many "likes" or "comments" a particular post has received.
Your Public Timeline/Wall Content on Facebook
New users often also fail to realize that while their home page and its News Feed are private and only get shown to them, their Wall content is by default more public. Some newbies also get confused by the fact that they have two key areas on their Facebook--a home page and Timeline/Wall--but only see one page--the Timeline/Wall-when they visit their friends on Facebook.
It helps to keep in mind that everyone's profile page and associated Timeline/Wall content is meant to be viewable by other people, at least by your friends. It's where Facebook users typically go to check each other out, and so is the one area of their own Facebook where most people spend a fair amount of time preening and wondering about how they look to others. The Timeline/Wall's management tools have changed over the years, often frustrating veteran Facebook users, but its core feature as your public face on the social network remains the same.
Editing Your Facebook Timeline/Wall is Tricky
You can edit the privacy settings for content on your Timeline/Wall mainly by deleting items or changing who can view them. You can delete anything that's been posted there, including stuff you posted and what your your friends put there, too. You can also selectively decide who can or can't view any item by using the "audience selector" button that appears beside each item. Learn more about the audience selector tool, also known as the inline Facebook menu, which allows you to make Facebook private, in this article.
Navigation: Left Sidebar Links on Home and Profile/Timeline
As stated, Home and Profile/Timeline are your two main Facebook pages. You toggle between them by using the two small links at the top right of Facebook's blue horizontal menu bar labeled with your name and "Home". Clicking your name in the blue bar will always take you to your Profile/Timeline page.
On both pages, the left-sidebar navigation links let you change what appears in the center column. By default, the News Feed appears on your home page in the center, right below the Publisher/Status box. That feed contains a steady stream of short summaries describing activities and messages that your friends are sharing on Facebook. But you can click "Messages" in the left sidebar to have all your private Facebook messages appear in the center column, or "events" to see various happenings to which you've been invited or clicked "like." In fact, click any item in your left sidebar to have the associated content appear in the middle. Remember, though, all of this content is personalized to you and only viewable by you.
You can't see this area of your friends' home page, either. Whenever you click a friend's name to go check out their Facebook page, you only see one area--their profile page/timeline with their own Wall content.
Navigating Your Profile Page, Bio and Timeline/Wall
On your profile page, and your friends' profile pages, a short summary of each user's personal bio (or "Info" as Facebook calls it) appears at the very top. Below that bio summary, in the middle column, each user's Timeline/Wall shows up by default.
As with the home page, you can change what you see in the middle column of your profile page and your friends' profile pages by navigating the links in the left sidebar. Clicking "Info" on your profile page, or anyone else's for that matter, will show additional details of that person's bio in the center column, depending on whether they have chosen to share their info with friends, friends of friends, networks or even the general public.
Click "notes" to see any Facebook notes you created, and click "Friends" to see your list of friends appear in the center column. Click "Wall" in the left sidebar to return to viewing your Timeline/Wall.
