The Complete Idiot's Guide To Facebook

You hang out in different social circles – friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances to name a few. Or you may have a trusted and not-so-trusted circle – Facebook friends you know and trust, and others you’re not really sure about. You don’t always want to share with everyone. Your mom doesn’t need to know about that wild night out you had with your friends, and you probably don’t want to announce to mere acquaintances that you’re going to be on vacation and away from your home for the next two weeks.

The solution? Create a separate friend list for each of your social circles.

With separate lists, you can share information selectively. Here, I explain how to do it. (Note: you can also use these techniques to share with or hide information from individual friends.) (more…)

If you’re wondering what day of the week is best to post to Facebook, when time to post, and how often to post (among other things), this infographic may be of interest to you and/or your business (courtesy of Dan Zarrella, a fella who calls himself an “award-winning social, search, and viral marketing scientist”):

If you’e wondering why Joe Kraynak and I chose to write The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook (and why our publisher thought it was a good idea), check out this infographic courtesy of SocialHype.com:

It’s been a good week in FarmVille. Your friends helped you build a horse stable and a larger chicken coop, you joined a co-op and now you’re rushing to plant a field with strawberries because — like they say — “everything grows in FarmVille,” even if it is mid-October.

But there are storm clouds on the horizon for users of this real-time simulation game developed by Zynga and available as an game on Facebook. The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that popular applications (also known as “apps”) and games like FarmVille have been transmitting players’ names — and even their friends’ names — to advertisers and outside companies.

The WSJ story said the top 10 most popular applications have been transmitting personal information about users to internet tracking companies. Worse yet, some have been forwarding a user’s “friends” list to these advertisers. Facebook’s 500 million-plus users all have access to such games and the Journal said this privacy issue affects millions of them who sign up for such online activities. And apparently no one is safe from such disclosure, the WSJ says, even those who go out of their way to set their Facebook settings at the highest privacy level.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has been under fire for the occasional security breach for users’ information. The company was quick to announce Sunday that it is (more…)

One of the best uses of Facebook is to rekindle long-forgotten friendships and restore family bonds. Today, I noticed a story on FoxNews.com entitled “Facebook Reunites Houston Father and Daughter After 25 Years,” about a daughter who found her father on Facebook after searching fruitlessly for 12 years.

I love stories like this – about how people use Facebook as a conduit for face-to-face relationships. If you have a story like this, please share by posting it here.

Facebook will be hosting a special news event at 5:00 p.m. 5:15 p.m. PT today. During the event, Facebook representatives will provide an update on many of the service’s features and products. You can watch the event live via the player below or by visiting the Event tab for Facebook Live:

Want to know what Joe and I sound like? Here’s your chance. We were interviewed earlier this week by Connie Bennett, host of Gab with the Gurus on BlogTalkRadio.com. Here, Joe and I discuss the most compelling reasons for using Facebook, Facebook’s privacy settings, how to promote your business on Facebook, and more.

Have a listen by clicking the play arrow below, and then be sure to let us know what you think.

Facebook is more than the largest digital hangout on the planet. It’s a thread in the social fabric of our culture or, as some might say, a tear in the social fabric of our culture. Whatever the case, Facebook has become a social phenomenon, complete with scandals or at least alleged scandals that typically accompany American celebrity and success. (In the United States, we love success almost as much as we love to witness the demise of the most successful.)

Facebook’s phenomenal success was destined to draw its own mob of detractors poised to criticize it and its founders and profit in doing so. One of the first and most successful so far is Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls it fiction, and there’s probably plenty of that in the book, too. I don’t know. I haven’t read it. I’ve been spending too much time on Facebook. Besides, I always like to see the movie first, so I won’t be disappointed in the movie because the book was so much better.

Fortunately, the movie version, The Social Network, is scheduled for release in theaters in October of this year. I think I’ll wait until it comes out on DVD, but if you’re interested, here’s the trailer.

I recently received a Facebook message from Abnoos Moslehi, a translator in Iran who has read Bipolar Disorder For Dummies, which I co-authored with Dr. Candida Fink. Abnoos wants to translate the book into Farsi. Following is her letter of introduction, posted with her permission:

Dear Mr. Kraynak,

I was once diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder II, in Iran, my home country, where there was and is no information resource on this disorder.

I am not sure where I first saw your book , but it was the first real/complete thing I read about my condition and it has been helping me a lot.

Due to lack of information in this field I have been thinking of translating this book into Farsi and somehow hopefully get it published in Iran. It is a huge task and being a BP, I can’t tell you whether it’s one of those highs or not!

Iran doesn’t follow the Copy Right law and basically it is OK to translate anything from anyone and publish it without their permission. However I’d like to make sure that this is OK for you, it really does matter to me that if I get it on the market, it should be decent by all means.

Thank you for your time,

Abnoos

Abnoos found me on Facebook via the Bipolar Disorder For Dummies Facebook Page, which I set up and co-host with Dr. Fink.

As Mikal and I explain in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook, Facebook is a powerful tool for connecting with friends and family. But we also explain how to use Facebook as a business tool for marketing and for pursuing potentially rewarding and profitable opportunities.

Were it not for that bipolar disorder Facebook page and my own presence on Facebook, I would probably never have had the opportunity to “meet” Abnoos and be able to assist her in her efforts to get my book published in Farsi.

Facebook helps to facilitate global connections and make things happen. Of course, ultimately the driving force is comprised of the individuals who make it happen, but technology often provides the introductions and infrastructure necessary get people connected and support their collaborative efforts.