Facebook Tutorial: How to Create a Facebook Profile

You probably know a lot of people on Facebook already, and they are probably wondering why your not on it yet. Facebook is one largest social networking sites on the web and it’s a great way to keep in touch with your friends. As more and more people join Facebook is becoming an important tool in helping people stay connected. It’s also free so there no real reason not to join!

The first step in joining Facebook is creating your account. On the Facebook homepage you’ll see a large blue box in the lower right hand corner of the page. Here is where you sign up for Facebook.You’ll need to type in you name. This is the name you’ll want to appear on your profile and the name by which people can search for you within Facebook. You’ll also have to add your email address and a password. This is how you will login to Facebook. Facebook will also ask you to add your gender and your birth date at this time.

Once you click the green ‘Sign Up’ button you’ll be taken to email confirmation page. Facebook will have sent you an email to confirm that you are creating an account. Just click on the link in the email and you’ll have a Facebook account.

First, Facebook will prompt you to several ways you can find your friends on Facebook such as through searching your e-mail and your school/company networks. Skip these pages for now; we’ll come back to them another time.

Facebook will then ask you to join a regional network. If you choose you can join a network that represents where you live. Just start typing in the city or region in which you live and Facebook will present you several options. Just choose the closest fit.

Now you’re ready to create your profile page. You’ll first be taken to the Facebook homepage. To get to your profile page click on your name on the banner on the top of the page. You can also reach your page by clicking on ‘Profile’ on the banner.

This is your Facebook profile page. Here you can add information about yourself to share with friends. To add information click on the info tab underneath your name and Facebook will guide you through a few different pages. You can pick and choose what information you want to share on your profile. There are also several privacy options you can choose from if you want to restrict who can see certain parts of your profile.

The first section Facebook will guide you to the page for your ‘Basic Information.’ Here you will see the information you added when you signed up, including your birth date information. You can choose how people see your birthday in your profile by clicking on the dropdown list. You can also add your hometown, relationship status and your political and religious views on this page. Any field you choose to leave blank will simply not appear on your profile. Once your finished click on ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom of the page and you’ll be taken to the next section.

This section is for your ‘Personal Information.’ In this section you can pretty much put any information about yourself that you want to. There is a section for activities, interests, music, movies, books, your favorite quotes, and an ‘About Me’ section where you can write about yourself. You’ll notice when you start typing in a field Facebook will prompt you with several popular choices but you can add whatever information you choose. Once your done save your changes and move on to the next page.

This section is for your ‘Contact Information.’ Here you can add your various ways people can get in touch with you. Again, if there’s any information you do not wish to share leave the field blank and it won’t appear. Here you can add your IM screen names (up to five), any phone numbers, your address, and a website if you have one.

If you want to add this information but want to restrict who can see it you can click on the lock to the right of the information you want to restrict. A window will appear with a pull down list. The list will give you several options to control who can see the information including your networks (the region) you joined, friends of friends, only friends, or you can customize to make your privacy options even more specific. Once you choose the privacy settings you want you can save the changes and move on to the next page.

This page is for your ‘Education and Work’ information. Here you can add information about the colleges you’ve attended, including the year you graduated, your majors/minors, and whether you attended for college or graduate school. You can add up to five colleges. You can also add up to two high schools you attended. There is also a section for job information. If you want to share where you work you can add this information in this section including a description of your job, how long you worked there, or if you currently work there. You can add up to 15 jobs. Once you your done adding information, save your changes and you are now done editing your profile.

Once you finish editing you’ll see how all the information you just added looks on your info tab. Now you can add your profile picture.

Click ‘upload’ link under the silhouette. If you have a picture in mind (it must be a jpg. gif., or a png.) just click on ‘browse’ in the window it will open your files. Find the picture you want and open it. Facebook will upload it onto your page.

If you have a webcam you can add a picture that way. Click on the ‘Take a webcam picture’ under the silhouette and it will open your webcam.

Once you have added a picture you can update your Facebook status. Fill in the bar that asks you ‘what are you doing right now?’ you can answer the question, add how you’re feeling or any update about yourself that you want your friends to know. You can update this as frequently as you want. Once you filled in the bar click post.

Once you refresh the page you’ll see how your completed Facebook profile page appears. You can change any aspect of your profile page, including the privacy settings, at anytime.

On your profile page you’ll see that everything you have just done appears on your mini-feed. Every time you do something on Facebook it will appear in your mini-feed. People can also comment on the stories that appear in your mini- feed.

You can change the comment settings by clicking on ‘settings’ above the mini-feed. If you uncheck the box comments on your mini-feed stories will not appear on your profile.

You can also remove stories from your mini-feed by scrolling your mouse over the information you want to remove and to the right an ‘edit’ button will appear. When you click on it, the option to delete the particular mini-feed story will appear.

Now you have completed setting up your Facebook profile page. In the next tutorial we will look at how to find your friends on Facebook.

Would You Pay To Use Facebook?

Although Facebook user numbers are continuing to increase, European users by over 300% alone, people are still asking the question of how Facebook can truly monetise it’s service. 

The cost of running such a service must be massive, and although Facebook haven’t released figures, the $1million+ they spend on electricity each month goes some way to detailing their outgoings. 

Microsoft acquired a $240million stake in Facebook in late 2007, that stake valued the company at approximately $15billion. However after trouble finding ways to make money through the service, chief executive and creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has found the valuation of the company declining alarmingly. It’s reported that Zuckerberg recently turned down funding which valued the company at $4billion, and that a possible new investor has gone in at an even lower $2billion valuation. 

This is worrying for Facebook, and potentially it’s users as Facebook look for new ways to make money through it’s service and attract new investors. It already has a comprehensive ad placement structure in place but it seems that with so many new users flocking to Facebook every day, that the ad structure is buckling under the shear weight of new and existing users. 

Perhaps the most obvious way of making money through the service would be to charge users a fee for using the service, with over 100million active users using Facebook this could mean a hefty chunk of ‘additonal’ income for the company and ease the worries of declining valuations. 

While the thought of paying for a once free service will inevitably irk some (or more than likely most, if not all) users, there are some interesting approaches to a paid Facebook service, most notably a tiered access system. Facebook would then consist of tiers allowing several levels of restrictions i.e. the free basic level would allow for up to 200 friends, one status update a day and a very small message capacity. For $5 a month those limits would be lifted meaning that many occasional users would be unaffected. 

Of those 100million active users, if even 80% were to leave the service or at least keep using the basic service that would still leave approximately 20million people paying $60 a year, meaning an additional $1.2billion in possible revenue. However a reduction in the number of users to Facebook, even with the introduction of paid members, could see a decrease in advertising revenue with potential advertisers concerned at the reduction of those potential customers. 

Facebook have denied this at every opportunity and has shown no signs of implementing any kind of paid service, however what is clear is that the service is beginning to stagnate and much like Twitter, is struggling to make money through their massive user bases. 

So we ask, how much would you pay to use Facebook? 

Here are some opinions from the Union Room and Projector team… 

Paul Arnold: I personally wouldn’t pay a penny to use Facebook. They get enough finance from me in the form of advertising revenue, forcing me to pay a subscription would turn me away. I’d use the cut down free service or move onto another site altogether. 

Jon Park: I probably wouldn’t. I might keep the free one just to keep in touch with other people on there but, being in the industry, build my own homepage and use that instead. I’m on the verge of doing just that simply because I don’t really use Facebook any more, but that’s another issue. 

James Machin: Personally I wouldn’t pay for Facebook - I don’t find it that useful other than catching up with what friends are up to! 

Phil Lowery: I would pay to keep my membership if everyone I knew did so too. 

If I could have an ‘inner-circle’ of 200 friends then it would be fine for me as I don’t have over that now. And, I’d certainly not need to update my status anymore than that so it’s hard for me to say how much I’d pay - but if there was no inner circle and I had to pay a subscription to join then I think about £30 a year - no more. 

Author :Jordan Hall