Facebook For Dummies. Carolyn Abram

on their profiles or flood News Feed with multiple posts about.

Stories are previewed just below the top bar in the center of the page. You can click any of the previewed images, as shown in Figure 3-3, to start viewing the associated story, or click your own image to create your own story.

      FIGURE 3-3: Check out stories from friends here.

      News Feed

Imagine that your morning paper, news show, or radio program included an additional section that featured articles solely about the specific people you know. That’s a description of News Feed. As long as the people you know are active on Facebook, you can stay up-to-date with their lives via your News Feed. One friend might post photos from his recent birthday party, another might write a post about her new job, and a third might publish a public event for her upcoming art show. These could all appear as stories in your Facebook News Feed.

      A News Feed bonus: You can often use it to stay up-to-date on current events just by seeing what your friends are talking about or by liking (or following) the Pages of real-world news organizations and getting their updates in your News Feed. And when there’s unusual weather, Facebook is often where you'll find out about it by way of a flurry of posts.

      News Feed is one of the most interesting things about Facebook but also one of the hardest to explain. No matter how we describe seeing a photo of a friend and her new baby pop up in News Feed, it won’t be as exciting as when a friend posts those photos. However, we do our best to capture at least a bit of this excitement in Chapter 4.

At the top of News Feed is the share box, shown in Figure 3-4. You use this box to add content to Facebook: status posts, photos, links to articles you find interesting, and so on. These posts also go into your News Feed and may appear in your friends' News Feed. Your friends can then comment, like, and generally interact with you about your post.

      FIGURE 3-4: Share what’s on your mind.

The Left Sidebar

The left side of the Facebook Home page is taken up by a sidebar that contains a list of different destinations in Facebook, as shown in Figure 3-5. The sidebar is divided into two sections: one for options that Facebook chooses, and one for shortcuts specific to how you use Facebook. Finally, at the bottom of the left sidebar are some tiny links that you won’t have to use very often.

      The top section

One thing you might notice in the top section of the left sidebar is that some of the sections from your top bar are repeated. You can click them in either place. You also might see some items in Figure 3-5 that aren’t on your own screen. For example, Voting Information Center tends to show up right before elections but not at other times. If there’s a natural disaster happening near you, you might see a Crisis Response entry.

      If you click See More (at the bottom of the top section), you can get a sense of how many different destinations, features, and tools Facebook offers. Most people won’t need all these, but everyone will wind up loving at least one of them. The following list below is not even close to comprehensive. Instead, it’s a mix of features that are popular and those that give you a sense of how many options Facebook provides:

       Pages: Pages are timelines for everything that’s not a regular person. Public figures such as the president or Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson have Pages, as do small businesses, fictional characters, television shows and movies, pets of all hues and stripes, and pretty much everything else you can think of. Clicking the Pages option displays all your Pages as well as tabs where you can view the Pages you have liked (or followed) or find local Pages you may want to like (or follow). Chapter 14 covers creating and managing Pages.

       Events: Facebook’s Events feature enables people to easily organize and invite people to an event. You can view events you’ve been invited to or created by clicking Events in the sidebar. You can learn more about creating, managing, and finding events in Chapter 13.

       Fundraisers: People often use Facebook to promote causes they care about. In response to that, Facebook added the ability to fundraise for a cause. You can fundraise for a personal reason or for a nonprofit. Facebook handles processing your friends’ donations and getting them to the organization you select. When you click Fundraisers, you are guided through the process of starting your fundraising and can check out other people’s fundraisers. For more information on fundraising with Facebook, see Chapter 12.

       Memories: Memories is a tool that works best after you’ve been on Facebook for a while. Much like a newspaper callback to notable moments in history on any given day, Memories calls out any notable moments from your own personal history — for example, on this day two years ago you posted a photo of the snake your cat caught in your backyard, or four years ago, you became friends with someone you later married. Clicking Memories is a great way to access some quick nostalgia.FIGURE 3-5: A sample sidebar.

       Games: Every day, people play various online games through Facebook. You can play games directly with your Facebook friends (most of whom are, as we’ve mentioned, your real-life friends). Click Games to browse the games you can play and to continue playing games. Interacting with games and other apps is covered in Chapter 15.

       Jobs: You can use Facebook to search for job listings in relevant industries or companies. The benefit of doing this on Facebook instead of another jobs site is that you can try to connect with Facebook friends (or friends of friends) who already work at the companies you're interested in. It puts the networking in social networking.

       Saved: Often when you’re perusing News Feed (which is covered in more depth in Chapter 4), you'll see a link to an article or a video that, for whatever reason, you can’t fully appreciate at the moment. You can click to save that link, and then get to it later by clicking Saved in the sidebar.

       Town Hall: Town Hall uses your location information to connect you to your elected officials’ Facebook Pages, from your local council-member all the way up to the president. You can follow and send messages to these public officials. You can also turn on voting reminders from Facebook.

       Facebook Pay: Facebook Pay is a method for making secure payments over Facebook. You can connect a credit card or bank account to your Facebook profile and then use that information to make payments to other users, donate to fundraisers, or purchase from online stores operating out of Facebook.

       Crisis Response: When disasters happen, the first thing people want to do is find out if their loved ones are safe. Crisis response enables people watching from the outside get news updates and learn about the ways they can help when something bad is happening. People can volunteer their time, donate money, and search for friends in the affected areas to make sure they're okay.

      Your shortcuts

      The bottom section of the left sidebar contains shortcuts. Facebook adds items to this section as you use Facebook. For example, if you start to spend a