What is Facebook: The Social Media Giant Explained
Most of us have heard of Facebook by now, after all, it’s hugely popular! However, there’s a lot more to it than most of us realize. Facebook is a social networking site that enables you to connect with friends, family, and even businesses online. It has some pretty in depth capabilities that most users have no inkling of, such as Facebook ads, community groups, even ways to sell your personal items to other locals!
It’s easy to see why Facebook is the world’s most popular social media site, coming in at nearly 3 billion users all over the globe. A big reason for this is its broad appeal to a wide user base. There is something there for everyone, and countless ways to take advantage of the features and benefits it offers.
History of Facebook
Facebook got a surprising start. Initially called FaceMash at its founding in 2003, it was created by Mark Zuckerberg, with later contributions from Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, Andrew McCollum, and Dustin Moskovitz. By 2004 it became TheFacebook and was primarily a way for Zuckerberg’s fellow Harvard students to connect with each other. Its popularity boomed immediately, some 1200-1500 students signing up for the site within its first twenty four hours of life. From there it spread to other Ivy League schools and by the end of the year it had one million users.
By then, Peter Thiel had become an investor and Zuckerberg left Harvard to run the site from California where he developed its headquarters. From there, it spread to other universities world-wide, dropping “The” from its name and just becoming Facebook, as we know it today. By September 2006, anyone 13 or older with a valid email account could use the platform. The rest is history.
Facebook has evolved significantly from its Harvard beginnings. Once, merely a way for fellow students to connect, it has become so much more. Family and friends used it to interact with each other, and businesses soon saw the advantages too. As time went on, features such as the “like” button, tagging people in photos and posts, groups, messenger, timelines, all became iconic aspects of the brand that people not only loved, but came to expect.
In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram, the photo sharing social media platform, which only added to its user base. A couple years later it also acquired WhatsApp, Oculus, and Atlas. Facebook Marketplace came along a bit later, enabling people to buy and sell items in their local areas or see which sellers were willing to ship to them.
More recently, Facebook has attempted to branch out into the “metaverse,” even rebranding their parent company to Meta. The idea is to provide a virtual reality space within a computer generated environment. This would allow users to virtually interact with one another through settings such as interactive puzzles and games, films, music, and more. It’s struggling a bit to find its foothold, as there are numerous challenges to overcome in terms of technical, legal, and social issues. However, it will be interesting to see what new directions Facebook takes.
Top Features of Facebook: What Can You Do on Facebook?
There are several features and functions that Facebook offers, such as creating events, business promotion, photo sharing, private groups, and buying and selling on Facebook Marketplace. Besides these more specialized abilities, the biggest basis for using this app is keeping up with friends and family. Considering how advanced some of these features can get, only the most commonly used ones will be covered. Read on to see why people all over the world use Facebook over any other social media application.
Creating and managing a Facebook account
Anyone 13 or over with a valid email address can create a Facebook account. Facebook accounts are free to create, and some people even have more than one, especially if they have a business they want to keep separate from their personal account. To get started you’ll go to the app or website, depending on the device you’re using. From there, it’s pretty intuitive. You fill out your information, select a password, all the usual methods when creating a social media account.
Once you’re settled in, you can begin to customize your profile and settings. You can create an avatar, upload a cover photo, fill in your About section, add a Bio, Hobbies, and several other personal details that you can leave as vague or as in depth as you desire. Settings can be found under your Account section and can get extremely detailed. There are options for privacy and security (highly recommended), account retrieval, and even memorialization settings so you can decide what will be done with your account should you pass away. Some of these options are pretty important, especially in terms of protecting your privacy, so it’s well worth going through each of them one by one. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it all in one go. You can take your time, save your choices and come back later, or even change your mind on what settings are active, if you decide you want to tighten up your security habits.
Connecting with friends and family on Facebook
The biggest reason people come to Facebook is to connect with family and friends. You can send a friend request by either searching for their name in the search bar and finding their profile, or you can upload your contacts emails from your phone or email account. If someone matches and they don’t have their settings on private, they should pop up. Facebook also likes to suggest people you may know, based off your profile and the profiles of mutual Facebook friends, in which case you can use these to send friend requests too. For family members, you identify them as such with certain labeling features available. You can look through your Friends list via your profile.
Sharing posts, photos, and videos on Facebook
Posts, photos and videos are easy to share on Facebook, whether it be from your phone or your PC or laptop. Giving Facebook access to your photos makes uploading them easy. There’s an entire section under your profile for photos and videos, all of which is very intuitive to use. You can also share these to your timeline or posts, which are generally at the top of your home or profile screens. You can also respond to your friends’ posts with photos or videos, in the comments. Besides these visuals, you can simply write text, whatever thoughts or information you feel like sharing. It can be something as trivial as complaining about your commute to work, or as momentous as announcing a new pregnancy. All of this is very easy to figure out, as there are empty bars with prompts such as, “What’s on your mind?” that make it very clear where your actual posts will go.
Joining and participating in Facebook groups and events
For events, usually you’ll need to be invited by someone else or create them yourself. They are under the long list of options you’ll see either on home or your profile. An event is usually via calendar based invitation and will send you to the event’s landing page. It’s an easy way to send invitations to friends for both in person functions or online ones, such as a video meet. They are easily managed through your event button. Often, you can mark if you’re going or not, in order to RSVP, which is useful for the host of the event.
As for groups, these are Facebook pages for people of similar interests or situations. Public Groups are open for the entire Facebook community and anyone can join. Open groups don’t have membership barriers but sometimes people want to control the size of membership and will therefore place limits. Closed groups can be seen by outsiders but require an invitation to join them and the content will be protected. Secret groups are even more private. These various groups can be very versatile. Everything from community HOA members to book fans to team members working on a project together. Here is some info on creating Facebook Messenger Rooms, which is another handy way to meet with multiple people.
Using Facebook for business and marketing
Many features of Facebook are useful for business and marketing, though often this does come with a cost. Facebook ads, promoted posts, sponsored stories, etc. are all valuable marketing tools that Facebook provides, though there is a fee that must be paid. That said, there are many business options available that are completely free. How much a business decides to pay and what features they use is up to them. Example? To save the cost of building a website, many local restaurants will make a Facebook page with their menu, specials, and photos of their dishes. All for free, saving them valuable expenses and also helping them find customers.
Frequently Asked Questions about Facebook
Facebook can be a complicated platform, depending on what you want to use it for. If you’re just keeping up with family and friends it’s generally simple. Business use, however, is a different beast. Here are some helpful answers to more frequently asked questions about Facebook.
Who can use Facebook?
Anyone 13 or older who has a valid email account and access to the internet. Note, in some countries the age may be a little higher, depending on local laws.
Is Facebook really free to use?
It is, even for many business purposes like events and company pages. That said, there are certain features, such as Facebook ads, that do require fees.
How do I connect with friends and family on Facebook?
Sending friend requests through Facebook searches, or looking up the person through their email address via Facebook are the primary ways to connect. You can also find them through searching the friends list of people you follow, if you happen to run in the same social circles, or you can look at the People You May Know section on your timeline. Facebook wants you to be able to connect with a lot of people so the algorithm will find accounts your friends follow and suggest them for you, so long as they don’t have restrictions on their account from their privacy settings. Some people don’t want to be found. Here’s some tips on what happens if you block someone on Facebook.
How does Facebook handle user data?
One of the biggest ways Facebook handles user data is through personalized ads, trying to customize your feed, promoted videos, etc. They also give out your information to third parties for things like research, marketing, business analytics, and even voter targeting, as was allegedly done for the 2016 US presidential election. Facebook is in a bit of hot water for some of their data practices, and though they claim to have policies in place to protect you, that has proven to be an unreliable statement.
Part of the problem is that the social media giant is just too big to keep perfect tabs on all that data. Representatives from Facebook admitted, in recent years, that they don’t know exactly where every bit of data goes, and with so many users, it’s no surprise.
What steps can I take to protect my privacy on Facebook?
Considering how vulnerable your data is on this platform, it’s important to protect yourself. The privacy settings are a bit complex and can be confusing, but they’re well worth learning. Under your profile photo with the dropdown arrow (or by clicking the three dots by your profile), you’ll find a menu with various settings. Go to privacy and start your walk through. It should go through sections on who can see what you share, how to keep your account secure, how people can find you, data settings, and ad preferences.
Each of these sections are important. There may be people in your life you don’t want having access to your personal information. You decide who sees what, which can be crucial in this age of cyberstalking. You can also choose who sees things like your birthday, photos, location, work history, all sorts of information that can make you vulnerable. So be cautious when sharing this data. Take advantage of blocking features, two factor identification, alerts for unrecognized logins, and how much of your personal data can be used for ad targeting. The walk through is fairly straightforward, though it will take you a bit of time to go through everything. You should do it anyway.
Besides your privacy, you should also be aware of some major security threats you could run across on the platform. Some of these include fake accounts posing as an account you follow, dodgy links that lead to viruses and malware, hackers who break into your account and pose as you, identity theft (be careful what personal info you share), catfishing, and apps that sell your personal data. There are measures you can take to protect yourself, so really pay attention to your privacy settings and educate yourself on the more common scams. If you do that, you can generally use Facebook without too many problems. If you want to learn more, here’s a good link to help keep your Facebook private.