Book Review: Facebook, The Missing Manual

Facebook: The Missing Manual
by E. A. Vander Veer
ISBN 10: 0-596-51769-6
ISBN 13: 9780596517694
US$19.99

Well, I finally received my review copy last Thursday of this new offering from O’Reilly. That’s the down-side of living down-under — it takes ages to receive anything sent by surface mail. This took so long that I was beginning to suspect some irony in the “missing” part of the title!Anyway, I have it now — and it’s a beautiful thing! I’ve bought O’Reilly books before (“Programming Perl” was top of my bedside reading pile for a long while), and I’ve always been impressed by the quality of the production and the content. This new offering (published in January) doesn’t disappoint. The book exudes quality; the typeface is clear, and I love the fact that the colors used match those of the Facebook site. (I’m sure that was no accident.) (And unlike the manuals of another well-known publisher of IT-related books, the content appears dense and detailed — there isn’t so much whitespace that you suspect the book could have been half the size!)The content is well organised, and immensely detailed. While I’d like to think of myself now as a FB “power-user”, I did discover a few things I didn’t know, which is a tribute to the thoroughness of the author.Writing manuals for software is hard to do well (god knows I’ve suffered through enough of them in my time). Usually they fall into the mind-numbing and ultimately pointless trap of taking you step by step through on-screen functionality — which you can see on the screen anyway! E.g. “Telephone number field — enter your telephone number.” (Duh!) However, while Vander Veer does take us step-by-step through every function on Facebook, she manages to do so with humor and insight. More important than the what is the why, and her she excels, giving us important information about the implications of each field and option, and warnings where necessary about pitfalls.

In summary, I would have no hesitation recommending this book for beginners, and in particular for those who are a little reluctant to join in. The section on privacy is excellent, and the author is at pains throughout to point out where caution might be advised — enough to reassure the most cautious of users. At the same time, she never loses sight of the essential core of Facebook, which is that its fun.

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Tags: bookreview facebook O’Reilly

Facebook SPAM

SPAM alert! Although some people might think that Facebook is mostly spam, some evil genius has found a way to spam using the popular SuperWall and FunWall apps. Those messages with “click forward to see what happens” are spam, and you should NOT respond, ppl. To what end is not clear (I’ve never actually clicked on Forward to see what happens) but it’s still friggin annoying.

For some detail on this problem — which has the potential to kill Facebook — see this article from the NYT.

Personally, I’m ditching Super/FunWall. Don’t need them anyway.

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A service presence on MyFace?

Interesting article in the Grauniad on a JISC study into Universties having a presence in social networks, “Students tell universities: Get out of MySpace!” [http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/news/story/0,,2205512,00.html]

…E-learning gurus want to exploit their students’ passion for the new generation of interactive online communication tools – collectively known as web 2.0 – to deliver academic content. Not content with podcasting mini-lectures to students’ mobile phones and i-Pods, they are hijacking the internet telephone system, Skype, and invading FaceBook.

Can’t help noticing the language here: exploit, not content with, hijacking, invading.

But a research exercise carried out by the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc), called the Learner Experience Project, has just revealed, amazingly, that students want to be left alone. Their message to the trendy academics is: “Get out of MySpace!”

Humph. Call it journalistic license, or just bad journalism, because none of this is evidenced in the rest of the article.

Online spaces are blurring, as universities that podcast and text their students have shown. The Jisc project manager, Lawrie Phipps, explains how the battle lines are being drawn: “Students really do want to keep their lives separate. They don’t want to be always available to their lecturers or bombarded with academic information.”

Based on qualitative research – one-to-one interviews with students conducted over two years – Jisc has built up a picture of how students are using IT to manage their social lives. Most are confident and competent IT users, but they are too often unaware of how they could apply their skills to enhance their studies.

Something that amused me was this:

Phipps recalls interviewing a first-year female arts undergraduate who professed absolute ignorance of e-learning or web applications. “She was updating her blog at an internet café and then started integrating photos from her Flickr site on to the blog. At the end of it she said, ‘That’s not technology. That’s what I do.’ “

This suggests to me that (as always) the answer you get depends on the question you put. Did they ask “what do you know about e-learning applications?” — if so its not hard to imagine the blank stares they got.

Phipps claims that once universities start using Facebook to talk to students it will be the thin end of the wedge. Just as the Blackberry was once hailed as the great liberator, enabling executives to work more flexible hours, the internet messaging mobile phone has become an instrument of oppression whose owners are constantly at their boss’s beck and call.

I’m guessing the Blackberry has an off-switch. Or you can just leave it in your briefcase, guys.

And just like the Blackberry there are positives and negatives. “Students appear to want their cake and eat it,” says Phipps. “They appear to want to keep their online persona private but when you ask them whether they’d like instant communication with tutors or feedback on essays (via Skype or Facebook) the answer is always yes.”

Sigh. Where to start? For one, communication on MyFace is not instantaneous, anymore than email or sms are. Its asynchronous, which is what makes it compellingly powerful. Second, if I were a lecturer, the last thing I’d want (or allow) is students phoning me any time they felt the need. Ditto IM. Face-to-face requires an appointment, or at best limited set hours. But I’m always happy to respond to an email or Facebook message — at a time of my choosing.

I believe that if we ask the right questions, then the answer will overwhelmingly be in favour of some kind of University presence in Facebook. The first important thing about Facebook in this context is that anything we offer — from a contact page to sophisticated apps — is going to be OPTIONAL. The student must choose to opt in to your app, and will be able to opt out again if you bore or irritate them.

I’ve done my own survey — asked a couple of students — if they’d like a library app that sent them a notification when they had overdue books, and the response was a immediate yes. Well, they might change their mind once they realise that all their friends will know they have books overdue, but … that will be their choice.

The point is, there will be no hijacking or force-feeding of unwanted information (unless Unis start advertising) because Facebook simply don’t work that way.

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