Keeping in Touch with Facebook

Facebook

Twelve million Australians are on Facebook and there are some 850 million worldwide - there must be someone you know amongst those!
Facebook has long lost the image of a fad indulged in by teenagers with time on their hands.  Many families are now keeping in touch through Facebook, grandmas and grandkids, parents with children living away from home, siblings.
Unlike Skype, Facebook is a place where you can observe if you don't want to actively engage with people. You can look at your newsfeed and see what your family and friends are doing. You can drop the odd like or comment to let them know that you are interested and following what they do. It can make a huge difference to how close you feel to these people who you may not get to see on a regular basis. They can share their holiday snaps and you can follow their trip as it happens. New babies, birthdays, weddings or their latest craze, new shoes, a celebration dinner. You can dip into as much or as little as you want of the things your friends and family have shared with you. If you want it to be a bit more of a two way street then you can also post your own updates that your friends and family can see and comment on.
Facebook also has its own message service that works very like email and you can even video call people as you can on Skype and send files etc.

But Facebook is also a place where you can interact with businesses, celebrities and interest groups. By "Liking" pages you can get their latest news, competitions and offers.

And something that people forget when they complain about Facebook changes and glitches - it is a free service!

Facebook Places

Less of a post, and more of a question.

Has anyone else experienced problems with Facebook locating businesses when creating a page? We've had two issues recently where a business couldn't be properly located. In the first case Facebook recognised the address, but then located it nearly a kilometre away from where it actually is. In the second case it refused to accept that the address even existed, despite it being a simple Number plus Street. Indeed in that second case both Google Maps and Bing Maps (which Facebook themselves use) both recognised it.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? Is it just an issue with shoddy map coverage in Australia, or a more deeply-rooted problem?

Facebook Timeline For Pages

Facebook is changing again. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth. Cue people threatening to leave never to return again. Cue people forgetting what the old site looked like two weeks after the change.

At the end of March 2012 Facebook will be switching all Pages (the things you 'Like', as opposed to people who you add as 'Friends') over to the new Timeline format. In the meantime you can preview how your page will look, but after the 30th March you will have no choice.

So what will the changes be?

Well, if your personal profile has switched to the timeline, then you will have an idea of what the new layout for your business or special interest will look like - they are very similar, with a large banner across teh top of the page, and a timeline of events and posts running down from that.

What else do you get?

There is now a facility to receive private message; people who like your page can send them to you, but you can't send messages to them. You can, however, reply to those you receive. This is good, as it prevents posts getting lost on the wall so that you never respond to them.

You can also pin posts to your timeline for up to a week. This means that they will stay at the top of the page, and not get pushed down by subsequent posts; useful if you want important announcements to remain visible for several days.

A tab at the top of the page gives you access to your 'Admin Panel' which allows you access to page activity, messages and other data. You can also use this to manage posts on your timeline.

The 'About' page has a much neater and more professional layout; excellent if your page is for a business.

As with your personal timeline you can now include a large banner image across the top of your page. This allows you to make a strong visual impression, but there are some serious restrictions on what you can include in that image. For instance the image cannot include text such as URLs or email addresses, invites to 'Like' or 'Share' the page or, indeed, any other call to action. It cannot contain information on pricing.

Pages will also no longer allow their owners to direct visitors to a particular tab on their page; you will always arrive on the profile page. This will tend to devalue custom-designed welcome pages, although some of  these can be made more visible at the top of the page. It's not quite the same, though.

Indeed all links to your photos and other apps are going to be at the top of  the page and more visible, which is nice.

Posts from fans, as opposed to page admins, will have less emphasis. So if the bulk of the traffic is from the page's fans, as opposed to the people who run it, the new layout is going to throw things out a little.

We have switched the AB Computer Training page over to preview the changes, and will publish it over the next few days, so you can see how the new layout works. You can preview changes to your pages HERE - click 'Turn On Preview' next to the page you want to try; it won't publish it to your fans until you click 'Publish', so you can set things up the way you want them first.

As with all Facebook changes this will take some getting used to and, if your are a business, you will find that it will require some changes in the way you use the site and interact with fans of your page. But it's not the end of the world, and, as Facebook is free, it still offers excellent value for money as a promotional tool - you get what you pay for, and more.

Update - We have switched our page over to the new format so that you can get a taste of what it is like. See it HERE.

Facebook and Twitter - The Mainstays of Social Media

We thought that it would be good to go back to basics a little, and look at two of the mainstays of social media. Most people will know about E-mail, SMS, texting and possibly instant messaging. But many of you will have heard of Facebook and Twitter and wondered what it was all about. This article is for you.

In short, they are just two more ways of using technology to keep in touch.

Facebook is a social networking site where you can keep up to date with what family and friends are doing. So how is it different from emailing or even picking up the phone? Well, you don’t need to contact the friends or family. You can look at their profile and catch up on their latest doings - look at photos of the birthday party or the account of what they did on Saturday night. When you meet them in the flesh you can say—”Hey so you had a day off yesterday.” or “Did you buy that outfit you’ve been lusting after?”

You can send private messages on Facebook and this works just like email but its real strength lies in writing on your'Wall'. These messages are available for all of your friends and family to see, so it’s a great way of keeping people in touch with what’s going on in your life—be it good or bad. Only people you allow to be 'friends' are able to see this stuff so it’s not open to public viewing, and you can even control which friends see which posts.

Setting up an account is free and easy to do. Very quickly you can establish a network of contacts by importing them from your email contacts or looking at friends of your contacts and asking them to add you as a friend. Hence, Joe, who you used to work with, finds you or you find them on Facebook and next thing a whole network of people you used to work with is opened up to you because they are all contacts of Joe.— you get the idea.

When you post you can write your own words, but you can also share photos, videos or links to interesting websites.

Most businesses, groups or organisations have Facebook pages now as well, and you can Like them which gives you access to news and special deals. An active Facebook account can enable you to keep track of what is happening with your friends and family, as well as local events, world news and the doings of your favourite rock group or celebrity chef.

This is the basics of Facebook. In addition there are a lot of games and activities you can get involved in if you want to– like running a farm, a zoo or even cooking!

Twitter can be used in a similar way but generally it is a quick way of updating a selection of people or anyone who wants to know, on what you are doing now. Many businesses, politicians and celebrities now have what are called Twitter feeds and you can 'follow' them. This means you can be updated on their latest doings, offers and so on.

Information on Twitter can be sent and accessed via the internet but also by text from your phone. It is a way of rapidly passing on information and you will find that your daily newspaper almost certainly has a Twitter feed which will provide you with links to the top stories of the day.

Words in a Tweet can be preceded with a '#' symbol, which sets them up as a tag. You can search on tags to see what stories or ideas are currently popular or 'trending'.

Of course, should you need help creating and accessing a Facebook or Twitter account, help is at hand in the form of our good selves, who can take you through the set up and use of these modern jungle tom-toms.

You can find and follow AB Computer Training on Facebook HERE.

You can follow us on Twitter by going to HERE.

LIMERICK COMPETITION

A young man from Woollomooloo
On Facebook for an hour or two
Wrote a limerick that scanned
And got so many fans
That he won a free lesson - it's true!

Yes, write a limerick (something involving computers or IT is what we are hoping for) on our Facebook wall, and get your friends to like it, and you can win a free 3 hour training package!

LIMERICK COMPETITION

ANNOUNCING LIMERICK COMPETITION

Write a limerick involving some aspect of computers or IT. It could be based on a funny experience you have had with your computer. Post it on our wall and share it with your friends. The limerick that gets the most likes will win a 3 hour computer training package with AB computer Training.

Your friends will have to come to our page and like the page. They will then be able to like your limerick.

The competition will run till the end of September.

We look forward to reading your limericks. Here’s one to get you thinking.



I posted a photo online

And thought that it would be just fine

But I looked such a fool

And not at all cool

The blushes were certainly mine



I'm sure you can do better than that.

Danger: Virus Targets Facebook Users

Whilst I'm sure that you are all well aware of the dangers of spam mails telling you to click on attachments, if you are a facebook user it's worth being aware of this:

Facebook Password-Stealing Virus

On the subject of Facebook, the Daily Mail in the UK have got themselves into trouble over an article they published linking it to paedophile activity:

Facebook Threatens To Sue 'Daily Mail'.

MARCH NEWSLETTER

MARCH NEWSLETTER - Now available on our website at www.abcomputertraining.com. It contains lots of useful information on setting up a network and articles on initiatives encouraging seniors to get connected and even the Pony Express. Take a look!

MORE FREE LESSONS - Vouchers are out there now offering FREE introductory lessons on:-
INTERNET, EMAIL, FACEBOOK, EBAY, WORD PROCESSING, CARD MAKING.

Watch out for vouchers at a venue near you or give us a call on 4272 3559.