Chapter 5
Timeline: The Story of You
IN THIS CHAPTER
Navigating the Timeline
Filling out and editing your Timeline information
Sharing with your friends through your Timeline
One of the fun things about writing Facebook For Dummies has been noting what’s important in my life based on the examples I use to explain certain concepts. When I wrote the first edition, I was just out of college and every example usually related to Ultimate Frisbee, whether it was posting photos (of a Frisbee game) or planning an event (like a Frisbee match). By the second edition, I’d been working a little bit longer and used examples related to some really fun travels I’d taken. The third edition was all about my wedding, the fourth about my time in grad school, the fifth about my new baby, the sixth about my second baby, and for this edition, well, turns out my two toddlers are still taking up a lot of space. As it turns out, your life can change a lot over the course of several years.
That moment of looking backward and seeing how far you’ve come is the idea behind the Facebook Timeline. Like many websites, Facebook wants you to establish a profile with the basic biographical information — where you’re from, what you do, where you went to school. But in addition to that, Facebook also wants you to keep updating and posting and sharing and marking events that define you. Then it turns all that information into a virtual scrapbook that you and your friends can explore. That virtual scrapbook is your Timeline.
Although Facebook does a lot of the work, this is your Timeline, so all aspects of it can be edited, modified, and changed based on how you want to represent yourself and your history. This chapter covers all the ways you edit the information and appearance of your Timeline, as well as who can see what on your Timeline.
Scrolling Through Time
Figure 5-1 shows the top of a Timeline. The Timeline has a few different portions: the big cover photo and the smaller profile picture, the navigation tabs beneath the cover photo, the About (or Intro) box, the Share box, and the Timeline itself, extending from the present back and back and back to the day you were born.
FIGURE 5-1: The top of a Timeline.
In terms of navigating the Timeline, the most important thing to know is that you scroll down the page to go back in time. As you scroll down, posts you and your friends have made and life events you have added keep on showing up. When you start scrolling down, a new menu appears at the top of the page (below the blue bar at the top). I call this the Timeline navigator (see Figure 5-2).
FIGURE 5-2: Use the navigator to activate your nostalgia.
The Timeline navigator uses a series of drop-down menus to help you jump around in time. Click any of the buttons to view a drop-down menu of options (clicking your name will bring you back to the top of your Timeline):
- Timeline: This drop-down menu lets you switch from the Timeline itself to the About section of your Timeline. I cover the About section in the “All About Me” section later in this chapter.
- Recent: This drop-down menu lets you hop from year to year on your Timeline. As you go further back by year, an additional drop-down menu, All Posts, appears that lets you jump from month to month within a year.
First Impressions
If you’re brand new to Facebook, your Timeline may seem a little empty compared to those of your friends. That’s okay; your Timeline will fill up as you start to update your status, post links, and so on (see the upcoming “Telling Your Story” section). But before you do all that, you want to get the basics filled out so that people can find you, recognize you, and learn a little bit about you. This section covers the very first thing people see when they arrive on your Timeline: your cover photo and your profile picture.
These two photos at the top of your Timeline present the first impression to all visitors to your Timeline. The cover photo is the larger photo that serves as a background to your Timeline. People often choose visually striking photos or images that speak to who they are and what they love. To change your cover photo, follow these steps:
Hover over your existing cover photo.
A camera icon and the words Update Cover Photo appear in the upper-left corner of the existing cover.
Click the camera icon.
The Update Cover Photo menu appears with four options: Choose From My Photos, Upload Photo, Reposition, and Remove.
If you’re using a Facebook Mobile app that syncs with your smartphone, you may also see an option to Take a New 360 Photo. Choosing this option lets you take a panoramic view of your surroundings with your phone’s camera.Click Choose From My Photos to select a cover photo from photos you’ve already added to Facebook.
The Choose from My Photos window appears, as shown in Figure 5-3. By default, it shows Recent Photos. You can get to a full list of your photos by clicking Photo Albums in the upper-right corner.
Choose Upload Photo to select a cover photo from your computer.
A window for navigating your computer’s files appears.
Select your cover photo from the options either on Facebook or on your hard drive.
This brings you back to your Timeline, where you should see the new cover photo in place with the overlaid message, Drag to Reposition Cover.
Because the cover photo spans the width of your Timeline, you may occasionally find that when you try to add some photos as your cover, you get an error telling you that it isn’t wide enough. Make sure your cover photo is at least 720 pixels wide to ensure that it will fit.- Click and drag your cover photo to position it correctly within the frame of the screen.
Click Save Changes.
Your new cover photo is now in place.
FIGURE 5-3: Use the Choose from My Photos window to choose a cover photo.
If you don’t like the way your cover photo is positioned, you can use the same Change Cover menu to either reposition or remove your cover photo. You can change your cover as often as you want.
Your profile picture is the smaller photo. This photo is what sticks with you all around Facebook, appearing wherever you comment or post something. For example, your friends may see your status post in their News Feeds, accompanied by your name and profile picture. Most people use some variation of a headshot for their profile picture. There are several ways to add a profile picture.
Add a profile picture that's already on Facebook
If you skip to Chapter 11, you’ll see that Facebook is the number-one photo-sharing site on the web, which means there’s a good chance someone has already added a photo of you to Facebook that you might like to use as a profile picture.
Use these steps to change your profile picture to one that is already on Facebook:
Hover your mouse over your existing profile picture.
The Update Profile Picture button appears.
Click the Update Profile Picture button.
The Update Profile Picture window (shown in Figure 5-4) appears. Across the top are three options: Upload Photo, Add Frame, and Edit Thumbnail (indicated by a pencil icon). The bottom part of this menu displays photos of you that are already on Facebook that you may want to choose as your profile picture.
To choose from the photos of you on Facebook, browse the displayed photos.
This window displays several rows of photos. Each row shows a certain category of photos such as Your Photos (photos you’ve previously added to Facebook) and Photos of You (photos in which you’ve been tagged). You can see more photos in any category by clicking the See More link on the right side of any row of photos.
Select the photo you want as your profile picture by clicking it.
This brings you to the photo cropping interface, as shown in Figure 5-5.
Using the cropping functions, choose the portion of the photo you want as your profile picture.
Move the transparent box around the photo by clicking and dragging the photo. Zoom in and out using the slider on the bottom of the box. Zooming out will include more of the photo in the profile picture, zooming in will allow you to zero in on your own face.
In the lower-left corner of the cropping interface is a Make Temporary button. People often want to change their profile pictures just for a day or two—for example, changing your profile picture to a photo of your wedding on your anniversary—clicking this button allows you to choose a date for your picture to switch back to your normal profile picture.Click Save when you’ve finished.
This step takes you back to your Timeline. The new profile picture should be visible.
FIGURE 5-4: Choose your profile picture here.
FIGURE 5-5: Crop profile picture to focus on just you.
Add a profile picture from your hard drive
If there aren’t any photos of you on Facebook that would make suitable profile pictures, you can choose a photo from your computer’s hard drive:
Hover the mouse over your existing profile picture.
The Update Profile Picture button appears.
Click the Update Profile Picture button.
The Update Profile Picture window appears (refer to Figure 5-4). Across the top are three options: Upload Photo, Add Frame, and Edit Thumbnail (indicated by a pencil icon). The bottom part of this menu displays photos that are already on Facebook that you may want to choose as your profile picture.
Select Upload Photo.
An interface for navigating your computer’s hard drive appears.
- Locate and click the desired photo.
Click Open or Choose.
This brings you to the photo cropping interface, shown in Figure 5-5.
- Using the cropping functions, choose the portion of the photo you want as your profile picture.
- Move the transparent box around the photo by clicking and dragging the photo. Zoom in and out using the slider at the bottom of the interface. Zooming out will include more of the photo in the profile picture, zooming in will allow you to zero in on your own face.
Click Save when you’ve finished.
This step takes you back to your Timeline. The new profile picture should be visible.
Add a frame to your profile picture
Often people use their profile pictures as way to show solidarity with something that’s happening in the world. This can run the gamut from expressing sympathy for victims of a natural disaster to supporting certain legislation, to rooting for your alma mater during football season. Frames are the easiest way to modify your profile picture for these reasons. Frames are just what they sound like, something that goes around your picture. Frames are created by outside developers, submitted to Facebook, and assuming they adhere to Facebook’s guidelines and policies, available for you to add to your profile picture. To add a frame to your profile picture, follow these steps:
Hover the mouse over your existing profile picture.
The Update Profile Picture button appears.
Click the Update Profile Picture button.
The Update Profile Picture window (shown in Figure 5-4) appears. Across the top are three options: Upload Photo, Add Frame, and Edit Thumbnail (indicated by a pencil icon). The bottom part of this menu displays photos that are already on Facebook that you may want to choose as your profile picture.
Select Add Frame.
An interface for choosing frames, shown In Figure 5-6, appears. Facebook displays the most popular frames by default on the left side of the screen. You can use the search box at the top of the interface to look for something specific like a particular sports team.
Click on any frame to see what it will look like on your profile picture
Whenever you choose a frame, the profile picture on the right side of the interface shows you what that frame will look like on your picture. You can click and drag your profile picture to reposition it within the frame, as well as use the slider to zoom in and out on your picture.
When you’re happy with your frame, click Use as Profile Picture.
By default, Facebook has frames expire after one week, meaning that after a week your picture will go back to its frame-less state. You can change how long your frame will stick around using the drop-down menu next to the blue Use as Profile Picture button.
FIGURE 5-6: Add a frame to make your profile picture say something
Much like your cover photo, you can change your profile picture as often as you choose. Every photo you select as your profile picture is automatically added to the Profile Pictures album.
Your cover photo and profile picture are visible to anyone who searches for you and clicks on your name. Make sure you’re comfortable with everyone seeing these images.
Telling Your Story
Getting back to the main focus of your Timeline, take a look at the stuff below the cover photo. Two columns run down the page:
- The skinny column on the left side contains some biographical info, as well as sections about your friends and photos. I go over this in the Sections portion of this, well, section.
- The wider right column is where posts and life events live. These posts might be something you’ve added to Facebook, like a status or a photo or something someone has added to Facebook about you, like a photo tag. These posts constitute your Timeline. As you scroll down your past, you can see what you were posting last week, last month, last year.
Whether you joined Facebook yesterday or five years ago, you can use Facebook to highlight important events in your life that are happening now or in years past. This section goes over the basics of sharing your story, from the ongoing process of status updates and photo posts to the posting of life events to the capability to curate your Timeline to highlight your favorite posts and events.
Posts
Posts are the type of sharing you’ll be doing most often on Facebook. These are the bread and butter of sharing. People post as often as they like about an array of topics. And they post things from the Share box, also known as the Publisher. The Publisher is the text field at the top of your Timeline’s right column, as shown in Figure 5-7.
FIGURE 5-7: The Publisher on the Timeline.
The Publisher is what you use to post content — statuses, photos, places, links, and so on — to your Timeline. When you post content, you can also choose who can see it. Friends and subscribers then may see these posts in their News Feeds when they log in.
The Publisher on your Timeline is very similar to the Publisher at the top of your News Feed. Both are used to create posts. You can use either one to add a status, photo, video, or link. You can add tags, emotions, and location information to posts made in either Publisher. The main difference is that the Publisher on your Timeline also lets you create life events, and lets you change the date of your post to add content (like photo albums) to the proper point in your history.
Status
The most common type of post that you see people make from the Share box is a basic text update that answers the question, “What’s on your mind?” On Facebook, people refer to this type of post as a status update or just as their status. Status updates are quick, short, and completely open to interpretation. People may update them with what they may be doing at that moment (“Eating a snack”), offer a random observation (“A cat in my backyard just caught a snake!”), or request info (“Planning a trip to India this summer. Anyone know where I should stay?”). It’s very easy for friends to comment on statuses, so a provocative update can really get the conversation going. I comment on commenting in Chapter 4.
Status updates sound small and inconsequential, but when they're added together, they can tell a really big story for one person or for many people. For close friends, these statuses let you keep up-to-date on their daily lives and share a casual laugh over something that you might never hear about otherwise. As a collective, statuses are how news spreads quickly through Facebook. Because your posts go into your friends’ News Feeds, a single update can have a big impact and is somewhat likely to be repeated in some way or another. For example, news of a minor earthquake in my area spread faster on Facebook than it did on news sites.
To update your status, follow these steps:
Click in the What’s on Your Mind field of the Share box.
This step expands the Share box.
- Type your comment/thought/status.
- (Optional) Add any extra details you want to your post:
- Background Color: If you want your status to appear on a colorful background instead of the usual black on white text box, choose from the colors displayed at the bottom of the Share box when you start to type.
- Photo or Video (camera icon): You can add photos or videos from your computer’s hard drive by clicking the camera icon and selecting the photos you want.
Tags (+ person icon): Tags are ways of marking people you’re with when you’re writing a status update. The tags link back to your friends’ Timelines and notify them of your update.
If you want to tag someone as part of a sentence as opposed to just noting that he’s with you, add an @ symbol and begin typing the person’s name. Facebook auto-completes as you type, and the tag appears as part of your status update: for example, <Eric> kicked my butt at Settlers of Catan.- Doing/Thinking/Feeling Information (lower smiley face icon): You can add details to your status about what you’re reading, watching, listening to, feeling, doing, and so on. Click on this icon and select from the menu that opens up to choose what you are doing and append it to your post.
- Photo Albums (photo album icon): If you’re posting a photo, you can choose to add it to an already existing album by clicking this icon.
- Location info or check-in (pin icon): You can click this pin and begin typing a city or place name, and Facebook tries to auto-complete the place where you are. A post with location info is often referred to as a check-in.
- Emojis (smiley icon on the right side of the share box): If you want to add emojis to your post, click this icon to browse Facebook’s selection and find the one that best fits your post.
(Optional) Click the audience menu in the lower-right corner to change who can see this particular post.
You can choose from the usual options: Public, Friends, Friends Except, or Custom … . Whatever you select will be saved for your next status post. In other words, if I post a link to Friends, the next time I go to update my status, Facebook assumes I also want to share that with Friends. I go over post privacy, including more advanced privacy options, in Chapter 6.
- Click Post.
If that made you feel like updating your status requires way too much work, I want to remind you how many of those steps are optional. You can follow the abridged version of the preceding if you prefer:
- Click in the Share box.
- Type your status.
- Click Post.
POSTS WITH LINKS
Frequently, people use their status updates to bring attention to something else on the Internet. It may be an article they found interesting, or an event, a photo album, or anything else they want to publicize. Usually, people add a comment to explain the link; other times, they use the link itself as their status, almost as though they’re saying, “What I’m thinking about right now is this link.”
Posts with links mean you can share something you like with a lot of friends without having to create an email list, call up someone to talk about it, or stand behind someone and say, “Read this.” At the same time, you’re almost more likely to get someone to strike up a conversation about your content because it’s going out to more people, and you're reaching a greater number of people who may be interested in it.
To post a link, simply follow the instructions for updating a status and copy and paste the link you want into the field where you normally type a status. This automatically expands a preview of what your post will look like, including a preview of the content (as shown in Figure 5-8).
FIGURE 5-8: A preview of your post.
A preview usually contains a headline, a thumbnail photo, and teaser text. You can add your own thoughts about the link to the space above the preview.
If you delete the URL text from the Share box, it doesn’t actually remove the link from your post. In fact, deleting the link can make your post look cleaner and leave more room for your own thoughts about the link.
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
Facebook is actually the Internet’s number-one photo-sharing website. In other words, people love to share photos, and they post a lot of them on Facebook. In Figure 5-7, you can see that Photo/Video is one of the options at the top of the Publisher. You can also click the camera icon to add photos to a status update. Consider these facts a teaser trailer for Chapter 11, where we go over the entire Photo application, including adding photos and videos from the Publisher.
Life events
Part of what’s nice about Facebook is the way it lets you connect with friends over the small stuff: a nice sunset on your walk home, a funny observation in the park (cats in strollers! Hilarious!). But Facebook is also awesome for letting you connect over the big stuff. Babies being born, houses being purchased, pets being adopted. The milestones, if you will. The Life Events section lets you make a note of that event on your Timeline.
Although it’s not required, you may also feel an urge to fill out your history on your Timeline. If you’re new to Facebook, you may want to expand your Timeline back past the day you joined. Life Events is a good way to think about what you want to add in your history.
To add a life event, follow these steps:
Click the Life Event section in the Publisher.
A menu of various types of life events appears. The categories are listed here although when you click each one, you’ll find many subcategories as well:
- Work & Education
- Family & Relationships
- Home & Living
- Health & Wellness
- Travel & Experiences
Milestones can be big or small; if you check out the subcategories, you’ll see things that range from getting your braces removed to learning a new hobby to having a baby. And you should feel free to make up your own. Lots of people use Life Events to represent small accomplishments in a humorous way. For example, one of my friends posted a life event to commemorate the day he successfully canceled his cable service.Select the event you want to create from the menu.
This opens a pop-up window with specific text fields to fill out and space for photos to go along with the event. You can see an example in Figure 5-9.
Fill out the details you want to share.
You don’t have to fill out all the fields, but it’s pretty important to fill in the date of the event so that it goes to the right place on your Timeline.Add a photo to illustrate the event.
Click Choose From Photos if there is already a photo on Facebook you want to use, or choose Upload Photos to add photos from your computer.
Use the Privacy menu to choose who can see this event in your Timeline.
You have the same basic options as you have all over Facebook. The most commonly used are Public and Friends.Click Save.
The event is then added to your Timeline, with any photos you’ve added featured prominently.
FIGURE 5-9: Add a life event from the recent or distant past.
As you scroll down through your history, you may realize that you want to add an event or milestone. Don’t worry about scrolling back up to the top of the page. The Timeline navigator should be following you as you scroll down, showing your name and the year you’re looking at.
Editing posts
After you create a post, you may realize that you typed something wrong, or want to add more details to the post. You can edit almost every part of a post you created after the fact. Click the tiny grey down arrow in the upper-right corner of any post to reveal the Edit Post menu, shown in Figure 5-10 (in some browsers, this may be an ellipsis icon instead of a down arrow). This menu displays slightly different options depending on the type of post, but for the most part, the Edit Post menu has at least the following options:
- Save Post: Saving a post adds it to your Saved Items, which you get to from the left-side menu of your Home page. I usually use Saved Items to keep track of other people’s posts that I want to check out at a later time, not for saving my own posts.
Edit Post: Choosing to edit a post reopens the Share box so you can change any portion of the post, whether that’s changing the wording of your status or removing a photo you had previously shared. Click Save to make your changes.
Once you’ve edited a post, you can view the history of that post by clicking View Edit History from the Edit Post Menu. Viewing the edit history lets you see all the changes you’ve made in the order you made them.- Change Date: Often you share items on Facebook after the date when they happened. For example, photos from a wedding might not be available to be shared until well after the wedding happened. You can change the date of a post so it shows up at the right spot on your Timeline. Click Save to make your changes.
- Turn off/on notifications for this post: If you post something that a lot of people are responding to, you may find yourself inundated with notifications. You can turn notifications off for any given post if you are finding those notifications annoying. You can turn them on again from the same Edit Post menu.
- Show in tab: This opens the post in a chat window at the bottom of your screen. This is another option that mostly gets used with posts that are getting a lot of attention. If you want to keep up on the discussion happening on something you (or someone else) posted, you can open that post in its own chat window and continue browsing Facebook at the same time.
- Hide from timeline: Hiding a post is different from deleting it. When you hide a post, you keep that post from appearing on your Timeline, but the post still exists. So if, for example, you hide a particularly bad photo from your Timeline, the photo album still exists. Anyone with permission to see it could navigate to your Photos section and check it out. But it’s not going to get called out on your Timeline. If you delete a post, it’s gone forever; even you won’t be able to find it on Facebook.
- Delete: Deleting a post gets rid of it from Facebook for good. That includes any photos in the post and any comments on the post as well.
- Turn Off/On Translations: If you are using Facebook in English and all of your friends are English speakers, you will not really need this option ever, and you certainly won’t need it on your own posts. For people who are seeing posts in multiple languages, Facebook automatically translates posts into their main language. Selecting this option turns off the automatic translations on a post so people can see it in its original form.
FIGURE 5-10: Edit or delete a post.
If you’re looking to remove things like photos or videos that exist only on Facebook, keep in mind that once they're gone from Facebook they're gone forever. It might be more practical to change the audience that can see the photo album than to delete it entirely. Trust me; one hard-drive crash, and your photos are Facebook-only.
The left column
The right column of your Timeline features your posts and life events and updates every time you add something new. The left column of your Timeline is a bit more static and provides snapshots of three parts of your profile that people tend to look for when they visit a Timeline:
Intro: The Intro box shows a portion of the information you may have added to your About section (which I cover soon in the “All About Me” section). The part it does show includes the things that help identify you as you.
I think of it as “dinner party introduction.” These pieces of info — where you work, where you live, where you’re from, who your spouse is — are the sorts of things you might talk about the first time you meet someone.The Intro box also includes featured photos. Featured photos are your most favorite photos. You can choose from photos you have added or that other people have added of you. To add featured photos, follow these steps:
Click the Add Featured Photos link in the bottom of the Intro box.
The Edit Featured Photos box appears (see Figure 5-11).
Click on any of the blank thumbnail images.
A box opens for browsing the photos of you on Facebook.
Click on your desired photo to select it.
You return to the Edit Featured Photos box, which now displays that photo as one the thumbnails.
Repeat steps 2-3 for the remaining four photos.
If you decide you don’t want one of the photos you’ve chosen, hover your mouse over its thumbnail and click the X that appears in its upper-right corner.
When you’ve chosen the photos you want, click Save.
Your photos now appear in your Intro box as Featured Photos.
Featured photos, like your cover photo and profile picture, are public, meaning anyone who visits Facebook, or who Googles your name and clicks on your Facebook profile as a search result, can see them. Make sure they are photos you are comfortable with the world seeing.- Photos: In addition to Featured Photos, the Photos box on the left side of your Timeline shows thumbnails of photos you’ve added or been tagged in, starting with the most recent one. Clicking on any photo thumbnail will open that photo up in the photo viewer. You can then click to page through all your photos.
- Friends: The Friends box shows thumbnail photos of, you guessed it, your friends. Friends with new posts will appear at the top, followed by friends you have added most recently.
- Featured Albums: If you are an avid photographer, you may want to feature certain albums on your profile in this section. Remember, albums you choose to feature are automatically made Public, so you shouldn’t do this with any photos you aren’t comfortable sharing far and wide.
FIGURE 5-11: Add Featured Photos here.
All About Me
The Intro box gives you (and your friends) the dinner party basics: where you live, what you do, where you’re from, whom you’re with. But there’s a lot more information about you that Facebook gives you the opportunity to share. Clicking the About link beneath your cover photo opens the expanded About section of your Timeline (see Figure 5-12). By default, you see an overview of all your information — from here you can choose different sections to edit.
FIGURE 5-12: The About section of your Timeline.
This page houses lots of information about you: Work and Education, Contact and Basic Information, Places You’ve Lived, Relationships and Family, Details About You, and Life Events. Much of this information won’t change very much over time, so it needs to be edited only once or when something big happens, like you move to a new city. Click on any of the sections to edit or add to the information there. You can also edit who can see it. Unlike the cover photo and profile picture, you choose who gets to see this information. By default, your information is public, meaning everyone can see it. I go over changing your privacy in more detail in Chapter 6.
Work and Education
Your work and education information is actually very important information to add to Facebook. This is the information that helps old friends find you for reunions, recommendations, or reminiscing. It is also what helps people identify you as you, as opposed to someone else with a similar name.
To add an employer, follow these steps:
- From the Work and Education section, click the Add a Workplace link.
Start typing the name of the company where you worked or currently work.
Facebook tries to find a match while you type. When that match is highlighted, or when you finish typing, press Enter.
Enter details about your job in the fields that appear.
These include
- Position: Enter your job title.
- City/Town: Enter where you physically went (or go) to work.
- Description: Provide a more detailed description of what it is you do.
- Time Period: Enter the amount of time you worked at this job. If you select I Currently Work Here, it appears at the top of your Timeline.
Select who you want to see this information using the privacy drop-down menu.
By default, this information is public. You can choose to only make it available to Friends, Only Me, or a custom set of people or friend list. These more advanced privacy options are covered in Chapter 6.
Click the Save Changes button.
You can change any of the information about this job (or others) in the future by clicking the Options link next to the workplace you want to change and selecting Edit from the menu that opens.
If you’re interested in using Facebook for professional networking, you can also add specific projects to your work history. For example, underneath my job at Facebook For Dummies, I could click Add a Project and fill out information about the most recent edition: who my editors are, how long the project took, and a description of what I’m doing.
Another option if you are job hunting on Facebook is to add a skill to the Professional Skills section. Simply Click the Add a Professional Skill link, type your skill into the box that appears, choose your privacy setting, and click Save Changes. Professional Skills can be whatever you think is relevant.
To add a college, follow these steps:
- From the Work and Education section, click the Add a College link.
Start typing the name of the college you attended (or attend).
Facebook tries to find a match while you type. When that match is highlighted, or when you finish typing, press Enter.
Enter details of your school in the fields that appear.
These include
- Time Period: Click the blue text Add Year to show when you started and finished your degree.
- Graduated: You can check the graduated box to note that you actually received a degree (or uncheck it to denote you did not).
- Description: Add details about your time at school that you think may be relevant.
- Concentrations: List any majors or minors you had.
- Attended For: Choose whether you attended as an undergraduate or a graduate student. If you select Graduate Student, you will have additional space to enter the type of degree you received.
Select who you want to see this information using the privacy drop-down menu.
By default, this information is public. You can choose to make it available only to Friends, Friends Except… , Only Me, or a custom set of people or friend list. These more advanced privacy options are covered in Chapter 6.
- Click the Save Changes button.
To add a high school, follow these steps:
- From the Work and Education Section, click the Add a High School link.
Start typing the name of the high school you attended (or attend).
Facebook tries to find a match while you type. When that match is highlighted, or when you finish typing, press Enter.
Enter details of your school in the fields that appear.
These include
- Time Period: Click the blue text Add Year to show when you started and finished your degree.
- Graduated: Check this box if you graduated from this school.
- Description: Add details about your time at school that you think may be relevant.
Select who you want to see this information using the privacy drop-down menu.
By default, this information is public. You can choose to only make it available to Friends, Friends except Acquaintances, Only Me, or a custom set of people or friend list. These more advanced privacy options are covered in Chapter 6.
Click Save Changes.
You can change any of the information you just entered in the future by clicking the Options link next to the school you entered and selecting Edit from the menu that opens.
Places You’ve Lived
This section allows you to add your hometown, current city, and any other place you’ve lived. If you haven’t previously added your current city or hometown, click the Add Your Current City or Add Your Hometown links to do so. If you need to edit your current city, hover your mouse over the current city displayed, and click the Edit link that appears on the right side of the screen. As you type in your city, Facebook will auto-complete as you type. Simply select your city when you see it appear. Remember to click Save Changes when you’ve successfully entered your current city and hometown.
From this section of your About section, you can also create a life event to represent other places you have lived. To do this, click the Add a Place link under the Other Places Lived section. This automatically creates a life event about moving. You can then fill out all the fields related to moving (including when it happened) and even add photos from your move.
Contact and Basic Info
Your Contact and Basic Information is just what it sounds like: the very basics about you and how to get in touch with you. Contact information includes:
- Phone numbers: You can add as many phone numbers as you have — home, mobile, and work.
- Address and Neighborhood: You can choose to add this information in case anyone ever needs to mail you a present.
- Email address(es): You can add as many email addresses as you want, and choose who can see those addresses.
- Website and Other Accounts: You can add information about your account handle for other websites or services like Skype, Instagram, Twitter, and so on. You can also add a link to any personal websites you have.
- Facebook Username: Facebook automatically creates a custom URL for your profile page when you join to make it easy to direct people to your Timeline. Usually usernames try to make use of your name, so a typical username might look something like:
www.facebook.com/carolyn.abram.
You can add contact info you’ve never added by clicking the links to Add <Contact Info>. You can edit any existing contact information by hovering your mouse over the line of info you’d like to change and clicking the Edit button that appears. When you edit something, you can also edit who can see it by using the privacy drop-down menu. When you are done editing your information or privacy, remember to click the Save Changes button.
I know, it may seem a little scary to add your contact information to the Internet, and if you’re not comfortable with it, that’s okay. Facebook itself is a great way for people to reach you, so you shouldn’t feel that it’s required that you add other ways for people to contact you, as well.
That being said, it can be very useful for your friends to be able to find your number or address if needed, and there are privacy options (which are discussed in Chapter 6) that can help you feel more comfortable sharing some of this information.
Your Basic Information includes the following categories:
Birth Date and Birth Year: You entered your birthday when you registered for Facebook. Here, you can tweak the date (in case you messed up) as well as decide what people can see about your birthday. Some people don’t like sharing their age, their birthday, or both. If you’re one of these people, use this drop-down menu to select what you want to share.
Although you can change your birthday and year at will most of the time, Facebook’s systems prevent you from changing your birthday too often and also prevents shifting to under 18 after you’ve been listed as over 18. If, through a legitimate mistake, this happened to you, contact Facebook’s Help Team from the Help Center.- Gender: You entered your gender when you signed up for Facebook, and Facebook mirrors your selection here. If you’re transgender or have a preference in how people refer to your gender, you can choose to edit your gender by selecting Custom from the drop-down menu and entering whatever word best describes you in the text box. You can also choose what pronoun should be used in News Feed stories and around Facebook.
- Interested In: This field is primarily used by people to signal their sexual orientation. Some people feel that this section makes Facebook seem like a dating site, so if that doesn’t sound like you, you don’t have to fill it out.
- Languages: Languages might seem a little less basic than, say, your city, but you can enter any languages you speak here.
- Religion: You can choose to list your religious views and describe them.
- Political Views: You can also choose to list your political views and further explain them with a description.
By default, your basic information (with the exception of your birthday) is public. Click Edit and then use the Privacy menu to change who can see any item of information.
Family and Relationships
The Relationship section and the Family section provide space for you to list your romantic and family relationships. These relationships provide a way of linking your Timeline to someone else’s Timeline, and therefore require confirmation. In other words, if you list yourself as married, your spouse needs to confirm that fact before it appears on both Timelines.
You can add a relationship by following these steps:
From the Family and Relationships section of the About section, click Add your relationship status.
An area for adding this information appears.
Click the Relationship Status menu to reveal the different types of romantic relationships you can add.
These include Single, In a Relationship, Engaged, Married, It’s Complicated (a Facebook classic), Widowed, Separated, Divorced, In a Civil Union, In an Open Relationship, and In a Domestic Partnership.
You can either stop here or choose to link to the person you're in this relationship with. Type the person’s name into the box that appears.
Facebook auto-completes as you type. Press Enter when you see your beloved’s name highlighted. Once you’ve finished these steps, this person will receive a notification about being in a relationship with you.
(Optional) Add your anniversary using the drop-down menus that appear.
If you add your anniversary, your friends will see a small reminder on their Home pages on that date.
Click Save Changes.
If you ever need to change this information, hover over it and click the Edit link to reopen this interface.
For many couples, the act of changing from Single to In a Relationship on Facebook is a major relationship milestone. There’s even a term for it: Facebook official. You may overhear someone saying, “It’s official, but is it Facebook official?” Feel free to impress your friends with this knowledge of Facebook customs.
You can add a family relationship by following these steps:
From the Family and Relationships section of the About section, click Add a Family Member.
A menu for editing this information appears.
Click in the text box for Family Member and start typing your family member’s name into that box.
Facebook tries to auto-complete as you type. When you see your sister's or mother's or whoever’s name appear, click to select it.
Select the type of relationship from the drop-down menu.
Facebook offers a variety of family relationships ranging from the nuclear to the extended.
Click Save Changes.
Facebook sends a notification to that person.
Details About You
The Details About You section is a bit of a catch-all section for details that don’t really fit anywhere else:
- About You: This section is a free form place for you to describe yourself, if you so choose.
- Name Pronunciation: If people are always mispronouncing your name, you can choose to add a phonetic spelling of it. This pronunciation will be available on your profile with an audio component that people can choose to play to learn the proper way to say your name. This information is always public and can be found by clicking the About section of a Timeline and navigating to the Details About <Name> section.
- Other Names: You can add nicknames, maiden names, or any other names people might use to search for you. This information is always public. Click the “Show at top of profile” box to display this name at the top of your profile next to your real name. This is especially helpful for maiden names.
- Favorite Quotes: If you have any quotations you live by, you can add them to this free form field.
Life Events
You can see a summary of all the life events that exist on your Timeline in this space. If you see big gaps in your history that you’d like to fill, you can click Add a Life Event. You then can select from the same categories and fill out the same forms that I talk about in the Telling Your Story section.
Sections
Sections are parts of your Timeline you and your friends can jump to in order to see compilations of, for example, places you’ve checked in or what books you’ve read. To view your sections, click on the More tab underneath your cover photo. Some common Sections you see listed here are listed below:
- Likes: The Likes section shows Pages that you have liked, starting with the most recent one. As you scroll back in time, this box shows Pages you liked at particular times. You can also click to view likes by category (such as Restaurants or Books).
- Check-ins: The Check-ins section displays locations where you’ve checked in recently.
- Interests: There are multiple interest boxes for things like Music, Movies, Books, and so on.
Adding to your Interest sections
Interest sections are a part of the Timeline that can be a really fun way to let your friends know the music, movies, television shows, books, and other things that really define you. Most of you have at least one book that’s your favorite, and maybe another that you’re reading right now and would really like to talk about with someone.
You can share both books you have read and your favorite books with your Facebook friends following these steps:
Navigate to the expanded Books section of your Timeline by clicking the More link beneath your cover photo and selecting Books from the drop-down menu.
Although I’m using Books as an example, the same applies to the other Interest sections.This takes you to the expanded Books section of your Timeline, shown in Figure 5-13. There are three subcategories of books that you can add to: Read, Want to Read, and Likes.
Click into the section you want to be adding books to.
By default, you will be in the Read section.
Type the name of the book you want to add into the search box.
Facebook will attempt to autocomplete as you type. When you see the book you want to add, click it or press Enter.
Repeat Step 3 until you add every book you’ve read ever.
Or, you know, until you get bored.
Click the Want to Read or Likes section to add books that are on your list or that you want to actively recommend to people.
Adding books in those sections is exactly the same: Search for the ones you want to add and then click them to select them.
FIGURE 5-13: An expanded Books section on your Timeline.
Editing sections
You can decide which sections are part of your Timeline. Click the More tab beneath the cover photo and select Manage Sections at the bottom of the menu that opens. This opens the Manage Sections box. You can check and uncheck your sections to decide which ones appear as part of your Timeline.
To edit the privacy of any individual section, navigate to that section (for example, select Movies from the More menu to go to the Movies section). Click the pencil icon in the upper-right corner of the section to open a menu of options.
- Hide Section: Select this if you want to hide the Movies section from appearing on your Timeline.
- Activity Log: Click this to be taken to Activity Log and see all activity related to movies that could appear in the Movies box. Activity Log gets a little more attention in Chapter 6.
- Edit Privacy: Click this to edit who can see all the movies you have liked on Facebook.
Your Friends and Your Timeline
Your Timeline is what your friends look at to get a sense of your life, and it’s also where they leave public messages for you. In this way, your friends’ posts become part of your history (just like in real life). Think about all the things you learn about a friend the first time you meet his parents, or all the funny stories you hear when your friend’s significant other recounts the story of how they met. These are the types of insights that your friends may casually leave on your Timeline, making all your friends know you a little better.
When friends visit your Timeline, they’ll also see a version of the Publisher (shown in Figure 5-14. This Publisher allows them to post some text or a photo to your Timeline. Check out the posts on your friends’ Timelines. Chances are that you’ll see a few “Hey, how are you, let’s catch up” messages; a few “That was an awesome trip/dinner/drink” messages; and maybe a few statements that make so little sense, you’re sure they must be inside jokes.
FIGURE 5-14: Leave a public message for a friend on his Timeline.
If you’re on a friend’s Timeline around his birthday, you're sure to see many “Happy Birthday” posts. There aren’t many rules for using Facebook, but one tradition that has arisen over time is the “Happy Birthday” post. Because most people see notifications of their friends’ birthdays on their Home pages, the quickest way to say “I’m thinking of you” on their special day is to write on their Timeline.
Although I think that the back and forth between friends is one of the delights of the Timeline, some people find it a little hard to let go. If you're someone who doesn’t like the idea of a friend being able to write something personal on your Timeline, you can prevent friends from being able to post on it within your Settings page. You can also limit who can see the posts your friends leave. From the Settings page, go to the Timeline and Tagging section and look for the settings related to who can post on your Timeline and who can see what others post on your Timeline.
The best way to get used to the Timeline is to start using it. Write on your friends’ Timelines, post a status update or a link on your own, and see what sort of response you get from your friends. After all, that’s what the Timeline is all about — sharing with your friends.