Facebook is the world’s largest social network and has come to dominate the way we communicate. The social network offers users the opportunity to share their thoughts, their media, their art, or just what they had for lunch, with billions of people from across the globe.
As of April 2017, Facebook currently boasts over 1.86 billion monthly active users, a 17% increase year over year, and 1.15 billion people use Facebook every day. Five new profiles are created on Facebook every second, that’s a lot of people.
If you’ve found yourself missing out on Facebook, or are just curious to see what all the fuss is about, but don’t know where to begin, then take a look at the simple guide and you’ll be sharing your old memories and creating new ones in no time.
To start, you’re going to need an account. Facebook accounts are simple to set up simply head over to Facebook.com, enter your email and chosen password, then after verifying your email account and filling in some details about you, you’re good to go.
Now you’re on the service but Facebook has added so many new features over the years it can be overwhelming at first, and it’s come a long way since publicly launching in 2006.
When you first login you’ll be greeted by the Timeline screen, this is a continuous feed that displays all of your friends and liked pages content that they’ve recently shared, and its ordered in a way that will try to show you the most relevant content to you.
Here you can check out all of the cool/mundane things your friends have been up to and either react to it with preset emotions, or comment on them to let your friends know what you think.
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If you want to register your own thoughts then head up to the top of the timeline and you’ll see your own status box. Here you can write about what you’ve been up to, or what you’re looking forward to and post it for your friends to see. You can also post links, pictures, or video if that’s what you’ve got to show. Simply upload them to your status and click post.
One of the main features of Facebook is Messenger. Messenger allows you to have private conversations with your friends or pages in either one on one or group settings. It works in pretty much the same way any other Instant Messaging service works, simply type what you want to say and wait for the reply, the messaging service even includes read receipts so you can check if someone has received and opened your message. Just like other aspects of Facebook you can also use this to share links, photos and videos.
The social network is great for sharing memories and things that have happened previously, but one of the new additions to the service lets you broadcast what you’re doing right that second. Facebook Live is a tool that allows users to stream video of what they’re doing and post it directly to the platform, making it ideal for showing off that cool trip you’re on.
Facebook is fairly straightforward once you get stuck in, and that’s definitely the best way to learn. There are a tonne of other features but those listed here should put you on the right track.
