You’ll see a lot of similar functionality across different sites: establishing connections, creating timelines, liking content, and so on. However, each site brings a slightly different emphasis in terms of what is important. LinkedIn, for example, helps people with career networking, so it emphasizes professional information and connections. Twitter encourages its members to share short tweets, 280-character posts with their connections. Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) encourages its members to share cool photos taken with mobile phones. Snapchat allows people to have video chats with friends while applying silly filters to their image in the video.
You might find some or all these sites useful at different points in time, but Facebook wants to be the one that's always useful in one way or another — so it tries to offer all the functionality we just mentioned … and more.
Finding Out How You Can Use Facebook
Now that you know what you can do, generally, on Facebook, it's time to consider some of the specific ways you may find yourself using Facebook in the future. The following list is by no means comprehensive, and we’ve left out some of the things already mentioned in this chapter (such as sharing photos and events and groups). These are more specific-use cases than an advertisement for Facebook’s features.
Getting information
At some point, you may need to find someone’s phone number or connect with a friend of a friend to organize something. Facebook can make these practical tasks easier. If you can search for someone’s name, you should be able to find him or her on Facebook and find the information you’re looking for.
Keeping up with long-distance friends
These days, families and friends are often spread far and wide across state or country lines. Children go to college; grandparents move to Florida; people move for their job or because they want a change of scenery. These distances make it hard for people to interact in any more significant way than gathering together once a year to share some turkey and pie (pecan, preferably).
Facebook offers a place where you can virtually meet and interact. Create a room where you can hang out virtually with friends; upload photos of the kids for everyone to see; write posts about what everyone is up to. Even the more mundane information about your life (“I’m at jury duty”) can make someone across the world feel, just for a second, as though she's sitting next to you and commiserating with you about your jury summons.
Moving to a new city
Landing in a new city with all your worldly belongings and an upside-down map can be hugely intimidating. Having some open arms or at least numbers to call when you arrive can greatly ease the transition. Although you may already know some people who live in your new city, Facebook can help connect with all the old friends and acquaintances you either forgot live there or have moved there since you last heard from them. These people can help you find doctors, apartments, hair stylists, Frisbee leagues, and restaurants.
As you meet more and more new friends, you can connect with them on Facebook. Sooner than you thought possible, when someone posts about construction slowing down his commute, you know exactly the street he means, and you may realize, I’m home.
Getting a job
Plenty of people use Facebook as a tool for managing their careers as well as their social lives. If you’re considering a job at a company, find people who already work there to get the inside scoop or to land an interview. If you’re thinking about moving into a particular industry, browse your friends by past jobs and interests to find someone to connect with. If you go to a conference for professional development, you can keep track of the people you meet there as your Facebook friends. Facebook has a jobs listing portion of the site you can use to browse for jobs in your desired field or area, putting the “networking” in “social networking.”
Throwing a reunion
Thanks to life’s curveballs, friends at a given time may not be the people in your life at another. The memories of people you consider to be most important fade over the years so that even trying to recall a last name may give you pause. The primary reason for this lapse is a legitimate one: There are only so many hours in a day. While we make new, close friends, others drift away because it’s impossible to maintain many intense relationships. Facebook hasn’t yet found a way to extend the number of hours in a day, so it can’t fix the problem of growing apart. However, Facebook can lessen the finality and inevitability of the distance.
Because Facebook is only about 17 years old (and because you’re reading this book), you probably don’t have your entire social history mapped out. Some may find it a daunting task to create connections with everyone they’ve ever known, which we don’t recommend. Instead, build your map as you need to or as opportunity presents. Perhaps you want to upload a photo taken from your high school graduation. Search for the people in the photo on Facebook; form the friend connection; and then tag, or mark, them as being in the photo. (You can learn about photo tagging in Chapter 11.) Maybe you’re thinking about opening a restaurant, and you’d like to contact a friend from college who was headed into the restaurant business after graduation. Perhaps you never told your true feelings to the one who got away. For all these reasons, you may find yourself using the Facebook search box.
Finding a happily ever after
Sometimes after hearing a description of Facebook, people worry that it’s some sort of dating site. No, no, no, we always reassure them, it’s definitely not a dating site … except if you want it to be. Facebook Dating is a separate part of the site that people looking for love can opt into. You set up a separate profile for the dating portion of Facebook, but then Facebook uses information about the sorts of groups you’ve joined and events you’ve attended to find matches based on your interests. Everything that happens on Facebook Dating stays inside Facebook Dating — your messages with potential matches, your profile, their profiles, and so on. It might just be where you find the one.
Entertaining yourself and playing games
Look, keeping up with friends is great, but lots of people log in to Facebook simply to be entertained. Facebook uses cues from friends to try and find the videos that are most likely to be of interest to you. Additionally, Facebook produces original content that can be found in a section of the site called Facebook Watch. If you enjoy gaming and watching livestreams of esports, there are also lots of ways to have that itch scratched in the Gaming sections of Facebook. You can learn more about gaming in Chapter 15.
Communicating in times of trouble
It's a sad fact of life that sometimes events happen beyond our control. Disasters great and small befall everyone at one time or another. While Facebook tends to be a place for sharing the good stuff, its tools also work very well to help with some of the logistics of recovering from certain types of disasters. Safety Check is a feature