We are taught that building walls means creating barriers to communication between ourselves and others.
In the world of Facebook, your Wall is how you build and connect with others. To call it a billboard is a more accurate definition.
Your Wall is what you see when you log in to Facebook. It publishes the Status Updates and activities of people in your network in reverse chronological order.
For every Status Update you post about yourself, there will be a corresponding entry in the timeline on the Wall’s of everyone you friend on Facebook.
When you consider the size of your network, the amount of updates posted to your Wall can quickly become overwhelming. There are tools to manage how much you do or do not see – we’ll touch on those later. Nonetheless, as you continue to grow and cultivate your network, this is why you will want to consider each new addition before impulsively saying “yes” to every friend request.
Status Updates
Status Updates invite you to answer the question “What’s on your mind?”
It is perfectly acceptable to post updates here related to your work life. Use good judgment on what you write!
There are many people who have lost jobs, been passed over for interviews, and lost control of their work situations for posting careless, unconsidered statements.
Many people use Status Updates to share what they are doing at a given moment, or an event they will be attending.
Why should others care?
Using Facebook intelligently yields stronger relationships with those you have a strong affinity.
Into horror movies? Share the update you’re going to see the latest sequel to “Saw” at 3 p.m. and the theatre where you’re going. Adding these details make it easy to create a group event quickly and on the fly. It also generates topics of conversation.
“Oh, I read you went to ‘Saw’ the other night. How was it?”
The same approach applies for theatre, concerts, sporting and political events, or other activities.
If you want to organize a group of people around a common point, using Facebook to find them and coordinate the event is very simple and fast.
Remember how detailed you were in completing your profile in the previous unit? This is where that thoughtfulness pays off. By including as many relevant interests, commonalities or other factors, you open yourself to contact by others with similar interests. Imagine how hard it would be to find similarly interested people without these tools.
This is why Facebook has grown to be THE social networking platform in the world.
By posting news articles to Facebook, you can create spirited conversations among your network. Posting news articles also provides a way for the hottest news of the day – among your network – to surface to the top. Don’t have time enough to read the newspaper or catch the news? Check your Facebook to see what people are talking about.
Many news organizations feed their content to a Facebook Page now. Rather than visiting the news organization’s web site, or receiving email updates, you can simply fan their Page on Facebook to have their updates appear on your Wall.
Unifying your preferred information sources with your network will streamline your information intake through a mixture of knowing what your friends and family are doing plus what’s going on in the world.
Given that the average Facebook user is on the site for 55 minutes, you can see why this consolidation of streams yields such a lengthy visit time.
Photo Albums
Facebook’s Photos feature enables you to see the latest pictures posted by people in your network.
Just like Status Updates tell you what people are doing, the Photos update shows you what they are doing.
Again, use good judgment when posting photos. Use good judgment as well in your privacy settings to control who can see what.
Photos get people into more trouble than Status Updates because they do not think about who might see them.
Do you want to be the guy remembered for being nice to his dog, or the guy passed out on a couch with beer and liquor bottles surrounding him?
Like it or not, we make judgments about people based on what we see. And photos seem to have an infinite lifespan on the Internet. One click of the mouse, and the image can be saved to a person’s computer – ready for emailing or posting elsewhere, and you cannot regain control of that situation.
For details on how to upload photos and create photo albums, plus how to share these images and keep them private, visit this link on eHow.com
Climb the Bean Stalk…err…Wall
Ready to scale that Wall but need a few footholds first? Post your question in the Comments section for a response.