Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

What is this Facebook ?

It's an online social network. And that is? An online social network, is an online version, of a social network.
For example, in your life, if you go to school, you have a social network there, the group of people you socialise with are the people you are networking with socially. Same goes for at your workplaces, and anywhere that you interact with a certain group of people.  Online, there are also social networks used on web sites. You may want to socialise online with people with the same religion as you, the same interests as you, etc. And for that, there are different web sites running social networks. Such as, Facebook, Myspace, Pownce, Flickr, Bebo, and many more.

Basically Facebook is just a web page that you can have your profile on, add friends, view their pages, and more which I am about to tell you about.

Your Facebook Page

When you first sign up for a Facebook account, you will personalise your page.
Within your profile page you will have a display picture, where you can add a photo of your self or whatever you like, so long as it's legal and suitable.
There will be a section of questions for you to fill in your answers, like a mini survey. Questions like what activities you enjoy, what your interests are, your favourite music, your favourite TV shows, movies, books, quotes and an 'about me' section.

Next you would see which of your friends already have a Facebook account (it tells you how you can do that easily), add those friends, and if you want, send invitations to your friends who don't have Facebook asking them to join. Eventually you will more than likely find heaps of people you know on Facebook. It is a really fun and easy way to stay in contact with friends and family. Once you've got your page set up, friends added, you can start checking out your friends profiles, you can message them privately through an email type system on Facebook or you can write on their wall. Your page, and everyone else' page, have what is called "The Wall". The wall is just a section where you can write comments on, say hi and what not to your friends and family on their pages.

Awesome Things You Can Do With Your Page

When you go to your homepage on Facebook, you will see something telling you that you have 7 requests, or less or more. I only get around to checking them once a week so I tend to have about 100 or so requests waiting for me. What are these requests? On Facebook, you can add applications to your page, join a cause, or a group. An application request may say, "Which Disney Princess Are You?", "Which Spy are you?", "What Weapon bests suits your personality?", "What kind of mom will you be?", or, "How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take In A Fight?" and many, many more. Those sorts of application requests can be fun. If you choose to add the application, it will give you a small survey asking all sorts of random questions, and then it calculates your answers and tells you what "etc" it thinks you are. Then, say if you are "Cinderella", or "A Bow best suits your personality", it'll tell you something it thinks about your personality, usually positive, sometimes negative. That result along with a photo of whoever it is or whatever it is, will be in a box, which can be visible on your profile to everyone, if you allow it to be.  Other application requests may be a game, such as Scrabulous, Hang-Man, Rock Paper Scissors, etc, which you can play against your friends on Facebook if they add it too. You may get an invitation to join a cause, such as "Support the Campaign for Cancer Research", "Tell everyone about Jesus", "Abolish Abortion", "Protect Wildlife", and things like that. If you join a cause you will have a "Causes" box on your profile, listing which causes you chose to be a part of.  And there are groups for different things too that you can join, such as "Creation Ministries International", "I Love Bunnings Warehouse", and things like that. There's probably a group for whatever school you went to or are going to, or your work place, or anything really, and if there's not, you can make one!

A lot of people get tired of application requests though, so there is the option to "Ignore all" requests, if you want it. I personally do choose to ignore the majority of the requests I get, but because there is the occasional fun one that I would like to use, every now and then I'll take the time to scan through all of them, click ignore on the ones I have no interest in, and add which ever ones I would like. Also, if you chose to add an application, but then find that you don't like it or don't want to be apart of it anymore for whatever reason, you can delete it. Same goes for groups and causes, you can leave them. It's not permanent. And a lot of the time, you can't see your results for a survey application you've done, until you send the request along to ten or more of your friends. That's the main reason a lot of people receive so many requests.

Some of my favourite applications are, "Top Friends", where you can arrange your top friends on your profile in whatever order you like, "My Family", where you can choose from many different stick characters, one for each of your family members, name them, and arrange them in a box that will also be visible on your profile. Not just people too, you can put your pet in there if you want. "Big Profile Pictures", where you can upload a few of your favourite photos onto your page for people to see. "Photos", where you can have photo albums of whatever you like from your own collection. And "Bible Verses" Where you can show a Bible Verse on your page, any verse you like.

Privacy Options

You can set your profile to private, or visible to everyone. You can have a limited profile, and select whoever you want to only be able to see you limited profile of whatever you make it. I don't personally have many privacy concerns about my page, but I know a lot of people would so the options for those things are there.

Contacting Friends & Family Through Facebook

Facebook is a great way to find people that you knew in the past, such as old school friends or work friends. Also, a close friend of mine had never met her Dad before, and had no way of contacting him. All she had was his name. After joining Facebook, she was searching for friends on Facebook and thought to type in her dad's name, just in case. Yep, there he was, on Facebook. She now has contact with him, and they're taking things from there. For me personally, because I'm a Christian, that wasn't by chance but by the grace of God that she found her dad on there. She'd been praying about it for a while, and in God's timing, He allowed her to find her dad, through Facebook. God works in mysterious ways, that's for sure.

I love Facebook, it's a lot of fun. I used to be a MySpace fan, but that's old news. Facebook, I find, is a lot cleaner and more enjoyable.
At first I didn't like it, but once I gave it some getting use to, I found it to be a lot better. My next problem was limiting my time spent on Facebook :)
Hope you didn't find this too long or boring, and that you did find it helpful.

Thanks for reading.

aManda