How to Use Facebook: Tips for Newbies

So you’re ready to join the 750+ million people on Facebook? Great! There are a number of things you can do to make Facebook safer, control your privacy, find your friends, and customize your experience. Here are a few of the key things you should know.

Security

Make sure you’re using browser encryption. Go to Account Account Settings Settings Account Security. By choosing to “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible” you’ll reduce the risk of someone stealing your password or eavesdropping on you over a wireless network. In the same settings window you’ll see options to notify you if an unrecognized computer or device tries to access your Facebook account. This is useful if you use one or two computers that access your account, but it may become a pain if you use random computers in many locations.

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Privacy

Facebook is about sharing with others, but you may not want to share everything with everyone. There are ways to determine who can see what by going to Account Privacy Settings. You can fully customize your privacy settings through Customize Settings so your data is shared only with a select group of people.

For each type of information you share, you can choose Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, or Customize. Customize allows you to choose specific people who can see your data, and allows you to hide your info from specific people as well.

Another part of being social is connecting, and Facebook allows you to determine how others can connect to you. In Account/Privacy Settings/Connecting on Facebook choose View settings to limit if people can search for you on Facebook, send you friend requests or messages, or see your friend list.

Friends

Facebook is no fun without your friends and family, so add as many of them as you’d like to be in touch with.

You’ll see a People You May Know section on the right side of your Facebook page, which is how Facebook suggests connections based on what it knows about you. Click See All and you’ll get a larger list. For a more directed search, click on Find Friends at the top of your screen. You’ll have the option to search for friends by name or by email, from other email accounts you own (Facebook recognizes over 2500 sources) or imported from a CSV file or Outlook.

If you’ve added people you no longer want on your Friends list, choose Account/Edit Friends. There’s a dropdown at the top of the page to choose which friends you’d like to view, and you can ‘X’ out any of them you’d like to remove.

The Account/Edit Friends page is also where you can create “Lists” to better organize your friends. You can create lists for high school friends, another for neighbors, others for work or your organizations, as many as you want. Just Create a List, and choose who you’d like to add.

Customization

Seeing lots of stuff you’d rather not in your News Feed? You can get rid of it! If you hover over an item in your feed, you’ll see a little ‘X’ appear in the upper right corner of the item. Click the “X” and choose “Hide this post” or “Hide all by xxx” and you can get rid of the stuff you’d rather not see.

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Twitter tips to take Tweets to the next level – Austin American

By Omar Gallaga

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

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Back in early 2007, when Twitter began to take off, Austin’s adopters fumbled and toyed with the online messaging service. In those early days, there were only a few dozen of us in town. We made up the rules as we went along, tweet by tweet. Like a developing new language, the norms and etiquette of Twitter grew organically.

Then Twitter got mainstream. It now has more than 200 million users, and it’s common to see references to it on TV (HBO shows have their own Twitter hashtags, displayed when the shows are broadcast), in the news (CNN and other outlets, the American-Statesman included, regularly use Twitter content) and, of course, in the hands of your fellow citizens, who are furiously tapping at their touchscreen phones whenever something of any significance at all happens to them.

But I’m going to be honest, and I mean this with no disrespect: A lot of y’all are just doing it wrong.

Maybe you figured out how to post a picture on Twitter. Perhaps you’ve mastered how to direct message instead of posting a private thought to someone as a public @reply. Congratulations! You’ve mastered the basics. But now it’s time to take your Twitter game to the next level.

There’s a lot of etiquette to learn and things you can do to avoid annoying your Twitter followers. Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years and a few additional tips I put together with help from friends and followers. A lot of these ideas also apply to other social networks like Facebook and Google+.

In general

This isn’t texting. Spell it right.You might think there’s no room to form complete thoughts or spell words out, but a lot of us manage just fine without resorting to “b” for “be” or “2nite” for “tonight.” Abbreviate when it’s absolutely necessary, but don’t make it your default style.

Pace yourself.If something major is happening — say, you just witnessed a crime — tweet away. But for normal days, spread your tweets a little instead of machine-gunning all your thoughts at once. Tools like Tweetdeck even let you schedule a tweet to post at a future time.

Leave Gandhi alone. A pet peeve of mine is people who constantly tweet inspirational quotes with absolutely no context (other than trying to sound like they’re living a Dalai Lama-approved life). Leave the quote collecting to Bartlett.

Turn off those automatic Gowalla and Foursquare updates. Don’t allow services or apps to automatically post every bit of activity to your Twitter account. You can post manually when you want the world to know you’re the Mayor of Chuck E. Cheese’s.

No tweeting from the toilet. Never. No. Don’t do it. And if you do it anyway, please don’t tweet about it.

Replies and retweets

Respond to @replies. If someone responds to your tweets, take the time to reply, even if it’s just to thank or acknowledge the person. Exceptions: Don’t reply to spam messages or feel you need to engage someone who’s trying to bait you into a Twitter feud.

Attribution is your friend. Retweeting a link, kitty photo or breaking news? Credit the person who alerted you to it and, whenever possible, the person who originated the info. Saying “via” “h/t” (for “hat tip”) or “RT @person” doesn’t take up much room. Don’t pass off retweeted jokes or links as your own.

Don’t retweet celebrities. In general, don’t retweet anyone who has more than a million followers. Chances are anyone who’s interested in the celebrity’s tweets already follows her.

Use “.@” sparingly. By default, @replying someone only displays the tweet to you, the person you’re replying to and anyone who follows you both. Adding a period before the @ tweets it to everyone. Only do that when your reply is something you feel everyone should see (for instance, if you find yourself answering the same question over and over).

Don’t beg for retweets. Tweeting “Please retweet!” or direct messaging someone asking them to tweet information on your behalf seems desperate, especially when directed at a celebrity. People will retweet good content when they see it. Make sure you post things worth passing on and it’ll happen naturally.

Don’t retweet compliments. Retweeting every compliment or positive thing someone tweets to you makes you look both smug and insecure. Call it a “Humblebrag” or (as Matt Graves, who works in Twitter’s San Francisco communications office, refers to it) a “Metabrag.” Either way, it’s annoying. Once in a while is OK. Do it constantly and it’ll backfire.

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