Facebook: Getting Started

Background
Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg.It was originally an online hang out for college students but quickly out grew that and now anyone 13 and older can join. On average it has 240,000 new users join a day, gaining on what some see as its rival Myspace but Forrester Research Inc. analyst Jeremiah Owyang says, "...MySpace and Facebook will coexist, because they both serve different purposes to different audiences." If you compare the two sites Myspace is now more of a bands and parties site, where as Facebook is more of a lifestyle site with groups and event invitations. In the last couple of years or so though Myspace has started to utilize some of the tools that Facebook has, such as third party applications and chat.

Join Facebook
First, go to http://www.facebook.com/ and create a User ID. This page says "Sign Up. It's free and anyone can join." So that answers that question. Under that is has fields for you to fill in your full name, amail address, password (you will be creating a new one it doesn't have to match your email login), gender and birthday. All of which are required. Then click the green button that says, "Sign Up".
The screen will then change and say 'Security Check', following the instructions on the screen enter the words, including the space between, that you see in the CAPTCHA (they are case sensitive), then hit the green sign up button again.
It then says, "Thanks for signing up on Facebook! We just sent you a confirmation email to (whatever email you put in). Click on the confirmation link in the email to complete your sign up." It might then, depending on who your email provider is, give you a button to click to go to your email account. If not then just go to your email as you normally would and click the confirmation link.

Step 1
You will see now a page that says 'Find Friends Already on Facebook' and 'Step 1 of 3'. Here Facebook wants you to log into your email account to find which of your email contacts are already on Facebook. Enter your password to your email account, not the password that we just created for your Facebook account. This is going to import the contacts that you have stored in your email account into your Facebook account and try to match the email address' with other people that have already signed up using that email address. (If you are uncomfortable adding your email contacts before you get to see Facebook some more then click "Skip this Step >" down at the bottom.)
Once you have entered your password and hit 'Find Friends' the screen changes to show how many of your email contacts are already members and will ask you to select the ones you would like to send a 'friend request' to. If you would like to select all of them then use the check box that says, 'Select All' next to it. From there the screen will change and ask you to send an invite to your other email contacts who are not already on Facebook to become members. Do this if you think it will be beneficial. There is no real down side to sending the others an invitation.

Step 2
Next it will ask you to add your education history, remember I said this was originally for college students. Add if you find this relevant, otherwise skip.

Step 3
The last step it will ask for is 'Join a Network'. This is where you will be able to connect to those customers who are local. (If your target market is not local then enter the city/state that you find relevant. Don't stress too much about this part because we will be able to add more friends later from other networks.) Once you enter your city/state Facebook automatically pulls up the 3 most relevant networks that are previously set up for you to join. Select one and hit 'Join'.

Ta da!
Your in! That is how you join Facebook.
Feel free to mess around with links and features. You will probably start receiving notifications of friends that are accepting your request. Also, don't be worried if you have at least one user that denies your request and sends you a message not to solicit them or some such nonsense. Some members are very, very protective of their profiles. I would recommend not replying to these emails as it can become messy if you do. Shrug. Can't please everyone. For the most part users will not mind you friend requesting but be warned you are at a very vulnerable stage right now because you are new to the community. I'd recommend reading up some more from my other articles before you start doing anything else.