 Hi, I'm Sam Auguston and welcome to this edition of Sam's Tech Talk. Today we're going to be talking about Facebook and what you can do with it. In case you're not sure what Facebook is, Facebook is a form of social media. And that's either a website or an application where you go to share your pictures, your thoughts, and other things that you want to do with other people. And with Facebook, your contacts are called your friends. Whether it's your family or anything else, it is your friend list. One thing I always encourage people about this is, is with Facebook is that you can spend as much time as you want to or as little time as you want to. I know some people who seem like they're on Facebook all day long because they post tons and tons of things. And then if you're like me, I might check once a day. Sometimes I might skip a day or two and then we'll go from there. In case you want to have some quick facts about what Facebook is, it was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and that was when he was a freshman at Harvard and he made it as a virtual space for his classmates to connect. The reason it got its name Facebook is because some of the big colleges and universities, when you come into school there, they give you a book of photos and information about your new classmates and they call that a Facebook. So that's where he got his inspiration for the application or the website, Facebook. Right now, Facebook reports they have over 200 million active users. And more than half of those people visit at least once a day. So that's over 100 million people that are coming to Facebook at least one time a day. And the fastest growing user group in Facebook is the people who are 35 and older. The average Facebook person who's out on Facebook, they've got over 120 friends. And I don't know about you, but I don't know 120 people that I want to keep up with. So my list is a lot shorter than that. And more than 30 million people who are on Facebook update their status, which means they post something that says something about themselves at least once a day. To access Facebook, if you have Windows 8 or 10, a smartphone or a tablet or anything, you want to use the Facebook app that you can get from your app store. If you're on an older version of Windows or if you're using guest access, like say you go to a library or something and you want to check your Facebook, you would use the website, Facebook.com, and log in with your username and password. That's how you would get to it there. Once you access Facebook, one of the biggest things you need to do is get your settings correctly. That's your privacy settings and those kinds of things. Because a lot of people that I know when they first set up Facebook, they go, I don't want to get these emails every time somebody logs into Facebook or every time somebody posts something to Facebook, how do I fix it? So that's some of the things that you need to make sure you get together there. And I'll tell you how to make that change in just a little bit. And if you're using it on say your smartphone or that kind of thing, you want to make sure that you get your video settings correctly so you don't use up all your data plan using Facebook. And I'll tell you how to do that in a few minutes. One thing about Facebook is that it can be very safe as long as you go through the steps that we'll talk about in a few minutes to have it set up correctly. And Facebook also has some wonderful security measures built in. I had one time about six months ago where I was on Facebook and I got an email from them and they asked me if I was logging on trying to log on from Indiana because they saw that I had another Facebook login already active. So someone was trying to get into my account from Indiana, which I wasn't there. And Facebook notified me by email and I answered them back and they let me know that they had taken care of it right away. So sometimes it can be a little annoying to get certain things from them but just know that it's for your safety and for your security that they're doing that. And if you get a new device and you log on to it, you're going to get an email from Facebook saying that you're logging on. To set your security and your privacy correctly, there's going to be a couple of things that you do to get to that. When you're on the Facebook site, there's a little thing along the top bar there that has three bars and a lock. That's where you go to get to your privacy settings on Facebook. And you basically go through the steps to give yourself a privacy checkup or you go to the settings of Facebook. And when you're in the settings of Facebook, you'll see the word privacy and you'll click on that and that tells you who can see your posts. The best thing to do there is I like to set mind to where only my friends can see my posts. I don't like everybody out there being able to see what I put on Facebook. And also too, you can determine who can contact you and you can also determine who they can look you up and what they can see when they look you up. It's like for me, I don't like it if anybody other than my friends can see things like my email address or my phone number. So I make sure that I have those things set to just friends. And that's how you do that there. Now another thing that you need to make sure that you have correctly on this is you need to go down to where it says videos. And for your videos, you need to turn off the autoplay feature on videos. Make sure that that's set to off so that way you don't eat up all your data on your data plan. And then another thing you need to check on this and this is make sure that so you won't get crazy, crazy emails about from Facebook every time somebody puts something out there. You go down to where it says email, you click on that one. And I set mind to where I only get notifications about my account or security and privacy. But you can also put things out there to where you can only get notifications of certain people do something on Facebook. So that's just up to you. Just kind of play with those settings to get what works for you. That's the biggest thing there. And also too on your mobile settings, make sure that you have it where you know how many texts you can get from Facebook, how many notifications you get via your mobile device. So those are the things you need to check there. So those are the biggest things to set it correctly to make it work best for you there. Then other than that, that's going to be pretty much what you want to do with those. But then you're going to wonder, how do I find my friends once I get out there? Once I get in Facebook, how do I find people that I want to look up there? If you want to look for people, there's always that little box at the very top of your screen. You can just type in a name of someone that you know. And anybody with that name is going to pop up in the list. And if they have a common name, sometimes you have to look through and find them. I put in my sister's name for there. And if they're already in your friend list, it'll show what relationship they are to you and what they do there. But if you're not sure about somebody, just click on the name. And it'll let you at least see their name and where they're from and where they maybe live, because that's how most of us put ourself out there. And then if that's who you want, you would send them a friend request. Click on there. And it would let you send them a friend request. One thing that I always have people ask me about Facebook is if somebody sends me a friend request and I turn it down, do they know I turned it down? Or if I ignore their friend request, do they know that I ignored their friend request? No, they don't know you ignored their friend request. And if you want to cover yourself when you see them, little white lies don't hurt us on those things if we want to guard someone's feelings. Just tell them you didn't see it. Or that maybe you didn't do it by friend them, chose not to friend them, because you're trying to keep your list short, that kind of thing. Do things to kind of smooth over feelings if you feel you have to. Otherwise, bite the bullet, see what you got to see with them. So it's just up to you. You can also look for companies or movies or groups that you want to be a part of. I'm a member of a couple of support groups for women who have survived strokes. So you can pretty much find all kinds of things that you want to do. Or say there is an author that you want to follow. I mean, you can do just about anybody there. I just picked randomly the author, Nicholas Sparks. You can follow his things on Facebook, that kind of thing. And how you follow anything like that is you like them. You click the like thing there and it'll start showing you things about them in your timeline there. Those are the biggest things there. Anything you want to find on Facebook, you can pretty much find it. Now, when you're looking for things on Facebook, when you click your name, it gives you your information that's about you and the information that you have posted or shared out on Facebook in that group there. If you click the home icon, it takes you to what they call the timeline on Facebook. And when you're on that timeline, you see the thing that says what's on your mind. And it lets you, that's where you put in anything that you want to share out on Facebook. And that's how you go there. And when you do that and then you click post, it puts everything out there that you want them to see. And when you click post, it puts it out there and it sends it out to all of your friends there. If you want to share a photo or anything with that, you click the photo or video button and then it's just like attaching something to an email so you do it the exact same way. So if you want to attach something out there, you just click whatever it is. You choose it and then it attaches it to a message. And when you want to do that, if you want to post that's what you want to post. You just say post, that's all it is to it. And if you want to say something about it, it says, say something about this photo. It's very, very simple. You can post photos and you can post videos to Facebook. So those are both things that you can take care of there. So that's what you got on those. If you're doing anything, I just look at mine and I see that I have a friend request. Anytime you have something new that's happening there, it's like with your smartphones and with your tablets. You'll get a red symbol there with the number of requests that you have. And I just had someone here that sent me a friend request. And you can choose to delete the request or confirm the request. If you confirm it, the person goes into your friend list. And then depending on how often they post, you'll see things with them. And the key thing about making sure that people stay in your things that you see on a routine basis, be sure that you like their post or make comments about their post. Because Facebook uses these techniques where you see the things most often from the people that you share with or the things that you like most often. So if you have a big, huge group of friends and you're not saying much about them and then all of a sudden or liking very much about what they post and then suddenly you stop seeing their post because your list is getting bigger, it's because you haven't been liking their post that you're not seeing them very often. So that's one of the things that you do there. I don't know if you're like me, but sometimes I have people where I make a comment about something that they said and then suddenly other people are making comments about what they said. And then I keep getting notifications over and over and over about that. If that's the case for you, at the top of that post on the right side of it, there's an arrow that's pointing down. And if you click on that, you can go down through there. And if you're seeing, if you're getting notifications about that post, you'll see a line there that'll say turn off notifications for this post. And if you just click on that, you'll stop getting messages when other people make comments about that. Or if one of your friends just posts something you'd really just prefer not to see it again, you can click on hide post and it will hide posts like that one or the end just that specific one in general. And also too, if you decide you don't want to see what people are sending you, you unfollow that person and you can do that from the same place. So it's all up to you as far as what you do there. You can play games on Facebook. You can do all kinds of things like that. Another thing you can do is if you ever have someone who is just completely harassing you on Facebook, you can go into your privacy settings on that, on Facebook, and it will let you go out there and you go to what you call blocking. And when you're on that, you can add people to that list for different things there. And it lets you know about that. So if you want to block users, you put their name and then you click on block. So that's how you get those in there. I've blocked a few people, but not too many. Sometimes you'll get stuff from total strangers that somehow just manage to slip through the cracks and get on your line, but you can take care of that by blocking those. Or if you have, I had an instance where it was someone who had passed away and their family didn't have access to get their thing off of there. And it really upset me to keep seeing their thing about them pop up there. So I had it block that one so I wouldn't see it anymore. So that's what you have there. It's really an interesting thing with Facebook that a lot of people don't realize is that it's always up to you. You decide what you see, you decide what you're going to do. You know, so if you've got a friend who's out there and they're posting stuff that you really just disagree with, I would suggest you just unfriend them on Facebook and just keep your contact to other things there. Another thing that a lot of people are confused about and they don't realize is they go, oh, I hate it when these people are posting all this stuff because they're filling up my computer with all this information. And actually none of the stuff about Facebook other than the program that gets you out to Facebook's website lives on your computer. All of the posts that you see are on their website. You're going out to their website, you're getting their information out there. You don't load this information into your computer. So if you've got a friend who posts like 30, 40, 50, 100 times a day, don't worry about them filling up your computer with all of their posts. You see their stuff but you don't get your computer loaded with this information so you don't have to worry about that. So that's one of the big things there. So, and another feature that Facebook has is their messaging. You can text message your Facebook friends just by clicking on the little box that's up there at the top that looks like comic strip, the little clouds above people's heads where they had what they had to say there. And that takes you to Facebook Messenger. So that's where you go with those. But one thing to remember that when you do that is it will ask you to load the Messenger app. And that's okay because that is part of a Facebook, part of Facebook rather. And if you want to see your text messages from your friends on Facebook, you need to add that up there. So that's what you've got there. And another thing that I always remind people of is don't put things out on Facebook that you would ever be embarrassed for other people to see in years to come. I know of people who will sit and argue on Facebook. And it's the most, excuse me, it's the craziest thing I've ever seen. They just argue and they put all of their families dirty laundry out on Facebook. So I always discourage that kind of thing. And another thing with younger people, I always encourage, you know, be aware of the photos that you share on Facebook because employers, colleges, all those kinds of things, they look at Facebook. They look at what you have out there. Say there are two people up for a college scholarship. And both of them do the exact same things in their personal life. One of them posts all of their partying on Facebook, all those kinds of things like that. And that's what, you know, the college is going to see if they check their Facebook page. But the other person who does the same exact things in their personal life, all you see on their Facebook page is, you know, where they talk with their friends, where they post things with their family, and other things like that. But you don't see anything about their partying. If it came down to it where those were the last two people up for grabs on that scholarship, more than likely the college is going to choose the person who's not the party animal or who they perceive to be the party animal. So if you do things like that that could get you in hot water, so to speak, or make you look less desirable to an employer or a school or to any organization, think about that before you put it out there on Facebook. So that's one of the big things there. I always tell people, please be aware of what you're putting out there. And remember, once you put it on Facebook, it is there. It's never going to go away, even if you delete it on your page. Because once you post it, it goes to your friend's pages, too, in your friend list. So even if you delete it off of your page, it still exists on their page. So that's one thing to think about really, really, really, you know, diligently when you're trying to do these things. Don't do anything on Facebook that's going to be an embarrassment to you or to your family now or in the future. People express their opinions on Facebook. So remember, we do live in the United States of America. And, you know, we've tried hard and fought hard to have the right to do all of these things. So even if you disagree with your friends, you know, put your point of view out there if you don't want to see theirs or you don't agree with theirs. But, you know, remember, they have the right to put theirs out there if they believe it strongly. So that's one of those things to remember, especially during this election year when you have things that will, you know, basically tear family and friendships apart if they allow it. Just remember, we live in a great country that allows us to express those opinions. So even if we don't agree with them, we can at least respect their right to do it. Now, one thing I do want to stress with these is that if you choose to play games in Facebook, remember that some of them, they do want you to pay to do extra things on those. So remember how you set those up. So that's what you have there. That's another thing. And you can play games with other people on Facebook. And sometimes how you get to different levels in games is by having more of your friends on Facebook there. So that's one of the big things that you look for. You can play those just like you can play them out on the internet. So it's up to you with those. Just remember that you might have to pay for some of the things that you do out on Facebook with those. And people also invite people to events on Facebook. So you just remember when you look at those, check out the invitation, see if you need to respond on it and those kinds of things. And also too, when you're setting your privacy on Facebook, make sure your internet settings are correct so that they can't monitor where you are. So say you look at Amazon for something, you don't start seeing ads for the same things on Facebook. So that's just really up to you out there with those. So as I keep saying with all of this, Facebook is social media. It's up to you to have fun with it and choose how you want to use it. You can use it as much as you want or as little as you want. It's all up to you. And with that, it's not a big deal. And another thing I always try to tell people, if you determine that Facebook is just not for you, don't feel bad if you choose not to be a part of it because there's nothing wrong with that. I think a lot of us forget that we need to have that human contact as opposed to just the computer contact. So what I want to close with on this Facebook episode is to tell you, enjoy Facebook if you choose to be a part of it. Make it fun. Enjoy it as much as you can or as little as you can. It's all up to you. Facebook doesn't have to be all-consuming. So that's one of the big things with that. Choose to use it the way you want to use it. And just because your friends do it doesn't mean that you have to. So that's one of the big things there. Some people love it, some people don't. So like with me, my biggest thing on mind is, most of mine is how I keep in touch with my family because they're scattered all around the country and that type of thing. So that's all up to you how you choose to use it. So that's the biggest thing that I wanted to share about Facebook today. If you have any questions about it, drop us an email here at the station or some other way that you know how to do it, whether email or contacting us here at the station or if you have ideas for other things that you would like to see me cover on this show. Drop us a message. Let me know. I'll see if I can put it out there. And one thing I want to encourage you to check out is next month's episode when I will be talking about cloud storage, the mysteries of storing things in the cloud and trying to help you get over some of those fears that some people have of storing their information in the cloud. So I hope that you'll join me then. And I hope that you've enjoyed this episode on Facebook. So thanks and join me again next time.