Facebook Ins&Outs:

Facebook - a social networking website launched in February 2004,owned by Facebook Inc. Ca. It has certain features like: the Wall, Pokes, Photos (where users can upload an unlimited number of pics), Status, News Feed, Instant Messaging (Chat), Gifts, Marketplace. Facebook only allows users to decorate their profiles using plaint text, while MySpace allows HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) modifications.

Facebook Chat

As of April 23, 2008, Facebook Chat was released to the entire Facebook user base. Users are only able to chat with their Facebook friends and on a one-to-one basis, although a user may chat with multiple friends simultaneously through separate chat interfaces.

Facebook Live

On August 13, 2010 Facebook launched a new service called "'Facebook Live'", a live streaming video channel that is intended to keep Facebook users updated to what is happening on the social networking site. The service, powered by Livestream, will feature videos from Facebook staff members and celebrity interviews, but not designed for Facebook users to showcase their own videos. All the content shown on Facebook Live will have some tie-in with Facebook products, features, or how people are using the site.

Messages and Inbox

Since the website's founding, it has allowed users to send messages to each other. A FaceBook user can send a message to any number of his/her friends at a time. Deleting a message from one's inbox does not deletes it from the inbox of other users, thus disabling a sender to redo a message sent by him.

Networks, Groups, and Like Pages

Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join. It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions and events etc. Groups are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects. They are increasingly used by clubs, companies and public sector organizations to engage with stakeholders - be they members of the public, employees, members, service users, shareholders or customers. A group includes but is not limited to the following: the members who have joined, recent news contents, discussion board contents, wall contents, photos, posted items, videos and all associated comments of such items. In this respect, groups are similar to pages but contain more features. Groups are limited to roughly 300 groups per user. The URL's of group pages start with http://www.facebook.com/group ... and do not include the name of the group.

News Feed

On 6 September 2006, FaceBook announced a new home page feature called News Feed. Originally, when users logged into Facebook, they were presented with a customizable version of their own profile. The new layout, by contrast, created an alternative home page in which users saw a constantly updated list of their friends' Facebook activity. News Feed highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays, among other updates. This has enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause. News Feed also shows conversations taking place between the walls of a user's friends. An integral part of the News Feed interface is the Mini-Feed, a news stream on the user's profile page that shows updates about that user. Unlike in the News Feed, the user can delete events from the Mini-Feed after they appear so that they are no longer visible to profile visitors.

With the introduction of the "New Facebook" - in early February 2010 - came a total redesign of the pages, several new features and changes to News Feeds. On their personal Feeds (now integrated with Walls), users were given the option of removing updates from any application as well as choosing the size they show up on the page. Furthermore, the community feed (containing recent actions by the user's friends) contained options to instantly select whether to hear more or less about certain friends or applications.

Notifications

Notifications of the more important events, e.g. someone sharing a link on the user's wall or commenting on a post the user previously commented on, appear in the bottom left. When a user is online, new notifications appear on their screen, keeping the user up to speed with events as they are occurring.

Pokes

The poke feature is intended to be a "nudge" to attract the attention of another user. Many FaceBook users use this feature to attract attention or say "hello" to their friends. It can also be interpreted as flirting. A previous version of FaceBook's FAQ gave additional insight into the origin of the feature, stating: "When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings."

There are several applications on Facebook which extend the idea of the poke feature by allowing users to perform other actions to their friends—such as "kick" or "wave to"—including Slide.com's SuperPoke! application. People often reciprocate pokes back and forth until one side gives up, an event known as a "Poke War" [my Grandkids love this stuff!!]. I don't use it at all, and neither do most of my contacts.

Status Updates

Facebook has a feature called "status updates" (also referred to simply as "status") which allows users to post messages for all their friends to read. In turn, friends can respond with their own comments, and also press the "Like" button to show that they enjoyed reading it. A user's most recent status update appears at the top of their profile, and is also noted in the "Recently updated" section of a user's friend list.

Originally, the purpose of the feature was to allow users to inform their friends of their current "status" (i.e. their current feelings, whereabouts or actions) by referring to themselves in the third person (e.g. "George is happy" or "John is with Robert at his house"). However, users are no longer required to write in the third person. Facebook originally prompted the status update with "Username is..." and Facebook users filled in the rest. However, on December 13, 2007, the requirement to start a status update with is was removed. The question "What are you doing right now?" was introduced. In March 2009, the status update question was changed from "What are you doing right now?" to "What's on your mind?"

In 2009, Facebook added the feature to tag certain friends (or groups etc.) within one's status update by adding an @ character before their name, turning the friend's name into a link to their profile and including the message on the friend's wall.

Usernames

Starting June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a feature that allowed users to choose a Facebook username to make user location easier. The user is able to direct others to their page through a simple link such as www.facebook.com/username rather than an otherwise complex URL. This feature on Facebook quickly spread, with more than 1 million users registering usernames in the first three hours.[30] Usernames are now available to any existing or newly registered user.

According to the FAQ, "Facebook reserves the right to remove and/or reclaim any username at any time for any reason".

Wall

The Wall is a space on each user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see while displaying the time and date the message was written. One user's Wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see his or her full profile, and different users' Wall posts show up in an individual's News Feed. Many users use their friends' Walls for leaving short, temporal notes. More private discourse is saved for messages, which are sent to a user's inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the message, much like email.

In July 2007, Facebook allowed users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas previously the Wall was limited to text only. In May 2008, the Wall-to-Wall for each profile was limited to only 40 posts. Recently Facebook has allowed users to insert html code in boxes attached to the wall via apps like Static FBML which has allowed marketers to track use of their fan pages with Google Analytics.