This Dummies book provides a good grounding in the uses of Facebook. As with all technology books, it’s *already* a tad dated, even though it’s publish-date is this year (2008!). Applications and their popularity ebb and flow - some of the third party applications they’ve mentioned I have not once encountered (ie - Fluff Friends), and some daily requests I get deluged with are not mentioned at all.

I can’t turn around, for example, without someone sending me a Lil’ Green Patch, guilting me into sending out more green patches. It’s like a charity virus. :-)

What the book is really for, though, is a novice through beginner’s journey into the social network that is Facebook. The guide begins with how Facebook started, what the term “face book” means (hint - it’s a college thing) and things you can and cannot do on this site.

What can’t you do? Troll. Lie about who you are. Be under 13. Upload illegal content or porn - sorry!

What can you do? Post a profile. Add photos, find friends, join groups, make pages for your business, plan events, mess with all kinds of fun apps, join up to five networks, make a newsfeed, sell things and buy advertising.

It’s useful that some mention is made of how many friends to acquire. Do you be-friend everyone who asks? The book suggests quality over quantity - always useful advice in making friends in the meat world too. :) What exactly Facebooking is, in practice, is laid out: how to find friends, how to “poke” them, and how to manage your ever-growing FB friend lists.

The Adding Photos chapter is pretty comprehensive and moves on into adding videos, writing Wall posts and giving “gifts.”

One thing I found interesting and useful was the section on setting up FB with cell phones, something I had not tried prior to the reading. Of course, young people who’ve grown up with texting won’t find anything new here. :)

The book has a great section for business people who have not been weaned on social networking - there is a chart advising when to make profiles, pages or groups, what you can do with events, how to set up ads and find/nurture “fans” of your business. This information should be extremely useful for anyone with a small or home business wanting to explore the amazing potential of free marketing/networking with Facebook, which is, honestly, a pretty intuitive site to dive into.

One thing I would have appreciated: some more insights from the authors on how FaceBook impacted their lives and the lives of people in general. FB is a huge world and I am still learning the etiquette - how long is too long to be polite when answering wall posts and messages? Sometimes I don’t get to it for weeks/months. Do I always need to return gifts/fairy dust/karma? How do I get people to stop sending me said gifts/fairy dust/karma? What about people in the real world who want to know about my life and *aren’t* on Facebook - how do I let them know I don’t have time for updating them and that REALLY if they care, they need to follow me there?

These are the kind of things I would really like to know and would improve the book considerably. In a sense, Facebook for Dummies is mostly a regurgitation of the how-to instructions you can glean yourself from the FB website. But a very nicely laid-out regurgitation. :)