We have entered an interesting time, until we had the world wide web we were each limited to what we had on our own computers. Software like word processors, image editors, databases and other such important but pedestrian software. However, the web changed all of that. At first it was just web sites that provided information, things like medical information, how-to's, news, reviews and things like that. However, over the last few years we have seen a lot of social applications become available.

Web sites for sharing photos, videos, other such sharing sites. Now we have sites like Facebook that allow you to share... well you. And, while you have control over how much of yourself you share, you do indeed share yourself. Your likes, dislikes, favorite music, photos, and they even allow you to connect with your friends and family online. Face can also help you find old classmates. What's nice about sites like Facebook is that you don't have to be in the same city. You don't even have to be in the same state, or country. Though at least for now you do need to be on the same planet.

Web sites or what I would rather call them web applications like Facebook are powerful and extensive and there are even some privacy aspects that you need to be aware of. However, the sites themselves provide very little on this kind of stuff. They don't have a downloadable user's guide. You kind of learn as you go. While that may work for some, the rest of us would rather have a user's guide. That is where Facebook The Missing Manual from Pogue Press comes in. This handily sized book really is the manual that you won't find on the Facebook site.

With information on joining Facebook and how it works, finding and adding friends, how to send messages to your friends, collaborating on projects, using Facebook in your mobile phone and most importantly of all being safe on Facebook, how to protect yourself and your privacy. This is just some of the information you will find in this book. It really does cover everything and it is easy to read and easy to understand. The author makes no assumptions about what you do or don't know about Facebook, so even if you have been a Facebook user for sometime you can still learn a lot and if you are new to the service you can learn everything you need to know.

Chapters:

Chapter 1: Getting Started
Chapter 2: Joining a Network
Chapter 3: Finding and Adding Friends
Chapter 4: Sending Messages to Friends
Chapter 5: Exchanging Automatic Updates
Chapter 6: Participating in Groups
Chapter 7: Facebook and the Real World: In-Person Events
Chapter 8: Going Shopping
Chapter 9: Hiring and Getting Hired
Chapter 10: Collaborating on Projects via Facebook
Chapter 11: Advertising on Facebook
Chapter 12: Customizing Facebook and Adding Applications
Chapter 13: Playing It Safe: Facebook Privacy
Chapter 14: Facebook Mobile

If you use or want to use Facebook to the max, this is the book for you. Easy to read, easy to understand, thorough and complete are all things that describe this book perfectly. As web sites or web applications become more powerful and feature rich the more we start to see books on how to use them and how to get the most from them. For Facebook this is the missing manual we have all been waiting for.