Facebook

Social Media platform 2: Facebook

What purpose would you use it for?

Facebook is used for lots of different purposes. The main use of Facebook is for people to stay in contact with friends, family and colleagues. However, Facebook can also be used for promoting your business, staying up to date with local news sources/events, following celebrities or even if you want to play games online with friends. The newsfeed is a timeline of these posts. Which are a mixture of text, pictures and videos.

What aspects of its design can you personalize?

When creating your own Facebook account, page or group, you can edit a wide range of choice about the information that is displayed about you. You can choose your name, your handle/username, profile picture, banner picture and much more. You also have full control over the details that are shown about you e.g. bio/personal statement, contact number, location, school, hobbies. When creating groups and pages you can also personalize even more by choosing an icon and a colour scheme.

How can you connect with other users?

Users are connected through a mutual friendship. If there is a friend or family member whom you would like to add to your list of friends, then simply sending them a friend request is how you would go about this. Once a request has been made it is then up to the other account holder to confirm or deny this. Users can also be connected by following or liking someone’s profile or page, this is common when the page you want to follow is a public figure or company.

What tools can you use within the site (e.g. tagging, linking, social groups) and describe their function.

Tagging - Tagging someone in a post will then alert this person by showing them the content in their notifications.

Liking Reactions - This gives you the ability to like, love, laugh, cry or anger a post. This lets the author or anyone else viewing the content know your thoughts on the status.

Share - Facebook also gives you the ability to share someone else’s content. Doing this will show the post on your page/news feed also.

Newsfeed - This is the section that lets you see any of friends or people you follow’s statuses all in the one place.

Group Chats - As well as private messaging, Facebook also allows you the ability to create a group chat. This would be beneficial in the work place, classroom or a large group of friends.

Live Streams - Live streaming allows you to broadcast yourself in the Facebook community.

Blocking - If someone is harassing or annoying you. You can block that person preventing them from being able to find your profile, message you or even view your content.

Outline the key issues surrounding social media etiquette

Facebook takes the safety of its users very seriously. The use of hate or bullying is strongly frowned upon and will not be tolerated. If a post contains content that may be deemed as inappropriate or harmful then Facebook will both remove the post and warn the author or issue a sensor over the status to prevent anyone from viewing it in case they are offended. Accounts may also be suspended if Facebook’s community standards are breached. Posts that won’t be tolerated are anything that contains racial or homophobic hate, nudity, criminal behaviour or bullying.