Face Book and Social Networking

You may have learned or noticed that over the years our relationship with people are evolving. Face Book, (I will explain in case you've been under a rock somewhere - FaceBook is a social networking web site wherein you can share up to date information with your 'friends' as to where you are what you are doing, photos, music, web links and more) it is helping to change the way people interact with one another.

In my opinion it is bringing people closer together. It is rekindling relationships that died many, many years ago - for many people. It's building new friendships between people who never may have imagined themselves friendly with one another. It's making this big ole place "a small world after all".

I am still rather new to the social networking scene including the blogging and sites like Face Book (FB). I, like many of you felt that the web site was for the youth, it was not something someone my age with my life's responsibilities had time to participate in, and it was too childish... I was completely wrong on many different levels. I was asked to give a presentation last Fall to a group of seniors, my task was to explain social networking and demonstrate how these sites work. This was my very first experience with My Space, Face Book, Reunion.com, and a couple others I can no longer remember.

I have concluded that Facebook is the 'more adult' of the web sites listed above. the Myspace seems to be very teen driven and I really didn't like the layout. Face Book lays it all out there for you in a page format where you can instantly see your friends recently uploaded photos and read their comments. I was shocked when I first signed up and was able to located about 20 plus people I went to elementary through high school with. These were people who's names remained locked somewhere in the back of my mind. Who's photos actually take up space in boxes in my attic and who's memories will probably be with me for a life time.

Let me tell you it is a very strange thing finding people who you may have not really been that close to but now your happy to read about their daily to-do's, share in their family pictures and meet their friends.

The first thing i did was to pull out the old year books from the 1980's and scanned them all into my computer then posted them on FB to share. I knew others had probably lost those books over the years and they too would enjoy seeing some of these old pics. This was a great way to have friends of friends find me. Everyone wanted in on tagging (naming) the people in the pics and my network of friends quickly grew. People that I still pictured in my mind as a child in 4th grade were now adults with families of their own. It was an amazing experience finding these people and seeing 'who we turned into'.

Face Book is a very easy to use system. You'll need to register and you can provide as much or as little information about yourself as you would like. You'll start by registering at their web site then you will choose your community. Additionally, FB will go into your address book to find out if anyone you have is currently on FB - then you can start adding friends. I found the uploading of pictures to be very easy as well. You can create various FB albums on different topics and you are not limited on the number of albums you can add (you are limited to 200 photos per album -which until I went on vacation I didn't think I would ever fill an album).

If you are interested in setting up and FB account and need some assistance Simply Seniors Computer Tutor is here to help. www.sscomputertutor.com Feel free to drop us a line and we will look forward to assisting you. If you would like to have an elderly family member learn FB the Computer Tutors can help you.

www.facebook.com

We are looking forward to seeing you out of FB some time soon and we will continue to add to our Blog about FB.

Stacey Kile
Computer Tutor - for Simply Seniors Computer Tutor 321-431-3866
www.sscomputertutor.com