Facebook's popularity is skyrocketing, drawing more than 500 million people to this combination online village green, personal website creator, and souped-up address book. But one thing you won't get when signing up is a printed manual.

excellent ( )

I have an old edition. Not too helpful.

A friend learned that I’d just joined Facebook and loaned me this book. Of course, within a week of my joining, some aspects of Facebook had changed. And today, as I write this review, I find my home page and profile look completely different. So, did the book help me?

I guess what I’d really like is an online Facebook manual—one that updates every time they update the site. But this book has a second edition coming out in March 2010, so maybe that would solve my problems.

As a Facebook newbie, I simply inserted information into my profile, responded to other people’s “stuff” that appeared in my “feed,” and wondered how anyone wrote all those articles since all I could see was a status bar rather like Twitter’s, or Gather’s, or any other ning’s.

My usual technique with any kind of software is get comfortable with doing very little then slowly start pushing buttons. The Missing Manual was valuable to me in that it suggested what sort of things I should be able to do, thus encouraging me to click those strange words with a little more confidence that they might do what I wanted.

“Note.” That’s like a “post,” or “article.” Okay. That makes sense. And maybe there really is a way to link Facebook to my blog so I don’t have to write the same post twice. (Three times if I want to post it on Gather too, but I usually don’t.) The Missing Manual didn’t give me the right instructions, but it pointed me in the right directions to succeed.

I found Facebook networks after reading the first few chapters, but I couldn’t find my local network no matter how hard I tried. Maybe they don’t have them anymore, or maybe I’ll find them soon just like I found groups, which seemed more useful, maybe. And I almost learned the meaning of pages, even creating my own one to advertize my books. One day I’ll figure out how to make it look more professional, and I’ll probably use the Missing Manual to help me guess what’s possible.

I’m glad I read the manual. I think it’s helped me get further, faster, though I still have a long way to go. Facebook’s fun, and my friend assures me it’s helped her friend to sell her stuff. Anything that helps me sell… ( )

Very clear and simple introduction to Facebook. This book covers the same things as Facebook for Dummies but presents information differently. If you are not happy with the Dummies approach, try this one. The author includes lots of step by step pictures. The biggest problem is that even though this was published in 2008, the book does not include the latest Facebook upgrades.