Facebook

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerburg a college student at Harvard University along with his four room mates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Originally the website was restricted to students from Harvard University but it was later expanded to accompany students from colleges around the area.

In January 2009 a report from Compete.com revealed that Facebook was top of the leader board on most used social network sites, followed by Myspace, bebo and a few other social networks

Advertising

Advertising is a common form of online money making. Most sites on the internet that offer a free service to there users will almost definetly have advertising banners or links unless funding is avaliable from some other source. This helps the people behind the site with server costs and gives them a little extra for there input into the site, while still allowing the user to use the site for free.

If you notice on the side banner of Facebook you will often see "Sponcered Links" These are advertisements that are placed on the page for users to click. When you click on one one these links Facebook gets paid a small amount. The amount that Facebook gets for each clickout varies but it normally averages out at $0.15 per click. This ammount maybe small but take into considderation how many Facebook users use the site daily.

Facebook has recently teamed up with Microsoft and agreed to display adverts to promote Microsoft products on Facebooks webpages.

Try these out

Change your language setting to private :)

Download FacePAD - this easy app will allow you to download entire facebook photo albums.
This is a plugin that is avaliable for Firefox browser

Flickr2Facebook
This is another app that allows a user to upload pictures from Flicker directly to Facebook photo album. If you have a large amount of photos to share this app is for you.

Update Facebook without Using Facebook
hellotxt and Ping.fm both introduced phone apps for iphone and ipad users that allow them to update and interact with Facebook with out having to login.

How to Display Selected friends Only on your Facebook Profile Page
You can customize which friends you want to appear in your list on your profile page. Just click on the pencil icon in your Friends box and type the names of your best friends in the box that says "Always show these friends

How to Remove Facebook Advertisements
This 3rd party script - Facebook Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages
Link : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/27121

Hide Your Online Status on Facebook Chat from Select Contacts
Facebook has integrated friends list with Chat and you can also choose which of these list members get to see you online. This allows you to create a list of contacts that you want to appear office to and set your online status for that group.

The power to reach out to so many people was made 1 step easier. You will find that most businesses have a Facebook profile in an attempt to reach the bigger media and promote new products to more potential customers.

There are a lot of recruitment agencies that use Facebook too, just remember to setup privacy settings if an Agency adds you as a friend.....you wouldn't want a potential employer looking through your latest photos of a drunken night out!!

Dont add your Boss or work collegues.

The default setting on Facebook will allow all your friends access to all your previous wall posts, photos, and recent activity. This has been known to cause issues and has in some cases resulted in people getting the sack.

Adding Family

Now this is a debaitable topic, it isnt always a bad idea but it really depends on how much of your social life you want to reveal. you can setup filters and catagorise your contacts which allows you to control what they see on your profile page but would you really want to go through each contact and customise what they can see. Im sure most of you wouldnt want your elders to see all your tagged pictures of a drunken night out or a picture of you eating someones face off.

Reposting the same comment

Dont do it. It is classed as Spam and it wont get you anyware other than your account suspended or possibly banned.

One chap I knew started using Facebook to promote products for his business. Instead of using a separate account he used his own Facebook profile and ended up with his account banned for 3 months.

Using facebook while calling in sick
Feeling ill isn't the best feeling in the world to wake up to but you should try to aviod using facebook on your sick days. If you have either your boss and or work collegues on there...lets face it updating your profile and posting comments all day wont impress either of your collegues or boss and may create an awkward situation when you call in sick next time.

Accepting friends that you dont know
If you dont know somebody then you shouldnt accept them as a friend. Once accepted this automatically allows them access to your profile, your uploads and will allow them to post comments on any of your pictures or wall. Think about it !!! You wouldnt automatically let a stranger into your home...why do it on Facebook

Dont use Facebook to store your holiday snaps
Facebook's photo gallery is a great way for you to share and upload photo's but it should not be used as storage for your media. Facebook automatically converts the files that you upload into a lower size, lower resolution format to save server space and for faster browsing of photos.
You can start with a high quality 14 MegaPixel snap that would be scaled down to a fraction of its picture quality.