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Chapter 4. Sending Messages to FriendsJust like your email program, Facebook lets you send private messages to other Facebook members. “Great,” you’re probably thinking, “just what I need: yet another inbox to check.” But before you skip to the next chapter, you might want to give these tools a chance. First off, Facebook makes exchanging messages dead simple—even easier than regular email. And then there are the slightly zany—but slightly addictive—ways to keep in touch with others that no email program can match. In an effort to mimic the different ways we interact with people in real life, Facebook lets you poke (give a virtual “Hey, how ya doin'?” wave to) friends; write on their virtual message boards; and send silly digital gifts. Even if you’re not persuaded by any of this, it’s still worth understanding the messaging system since, soon enough, you’ll no doubt get a Facebook message from one of your friends. Sending MessagesLots of websites offer free Web-based email, and Facebook is one of them—sort of. As a Facebook member, you can send private messages to any other Facebook member (whether or not they’re on your Friend List), and to regular email addresses. But only other Facebook members can send you Facebook messages. In other words, when you register for Facebook, you don’t get a email account; people have to sign up for Facebook and follow the steps below if they want to send a message to your Facebook inbox. Sending Messages to FriendsMost of the messages you send, of course, will be to people you already know. Facebook gives you a simple set of tools that will look familiar to anyone who’s used email before. Here’s what you do:
Sending Messages to People You’re Not (Yet) Friends WithFacebook lets you send a message to any Facebook member, even if she’s not on your Friend List and doesn’t belong to any of your networks. NoteThere’s one exception to this rule: If a Facebook member blocks you (Fighting Back), you can’t contact him on Facebook—by sending him a message, poking him, or any other way. To send a message to a non-friend Facebook member:
Sending a Message to More Than One PersonBecause Facebook was designed to help people communicate online just as they do offline, the site makes it easy to send a message to an individual—but a little harder to send the same message to dozens of people all at once. If you go too far down that path, the Facebook design team reasoned, you’re talking spam. After all, how often do you whip out a bullhorn and address a real-life crowd of dozens? Facebook decided to cap the number of people you can send a message to at 20, so you can use the basic message-sending instructions on Sending Messages and type in a combination of Facebook friends’ names and email addresses to send your message to up to 20 people. Another option is to create a Friend List (Creating a Friend List) containing all the people you want to send the message to. Then, on the Compose Message box, head to the “To:” field and type the name of the list. But if you try to send a message to a Friend List that includes more than 20 people, Facebook will display a “Cannot add list” message and remind you of its 20-person limit. NoteAn exception to the no-spam rule is that Facebook lets you send the same message to every member of a Group (Chapter 6)—although even then, Facebook theoretically caps the number of recipients at 5,000. (The cap is theoretical because some Facebook members have had their accounts suspended for sending messages to a lot fewer than 5,000 people.) Receiving MessagesWhen someone sends you a message via Facebook, two things happen:
NoteYour primary email address is the one you used when you registered for the site (unless you’ve changed it since then). To change your primary email address, at the top of any Facebook screen, mouse over Settings and choose Account Settings; on the screen that appears, click Email. TipIf you spend a lot of time on the site and regularly check your Facebook inbox, you don’t really need to have Facebook messages sent to your regular email address, too. To make it so you only receive Facebook messages in your Facebook inbox, head to the Email Notifications page (to get there, simply click the “Want to control which emails you receive from Facebook?” link at the bottom of any email Facebook sent to your regular email address) and turn off the checkbox next to “Sends me a message”. Viewing Your Facebook InboxIt’s easy to tell if you have a new Facebook message even without opening your inbox. Just take a look the blue menu bar at the top of any Facebook screen. If you see a red number right above the icon that looks like two little speech bubbles (it’s the second icon to the right of the word “facebook”), you’ve got a new message (or two, or more). Click that icon and a list of your most recent messages appears. To see your full inbox, click the See All Messages link at the bottom of the list. Facebook puts a big blue dot in front of any message you haven’t read yet, and highlights the entire listing in light blue. Facebook automatically lists all your messages, even ones you’ve already read. If you only want to see the ones you haven’t read, click the word “Unread” in the upper-right part of your screen. Clicking a sender’s name or picture shoots you directly to that person’s profile, which is handy if you don’t recognize him. NoteA little left-pointing arrow in front of a message listing means you’ve replied to the message. Clicking the X on the right side of a listing deletes the thread that message belongs to. (A thread is a bunch of messages with the same subject line.) Reading and Responding to MessagesTo read a message in your inbox, click either the subject line or first line of the message and Facebook displays the whole message. TipA particularly cool feature of Facebook’s inbox is that when you display a message that’s the latest in a long, drawn-out, back-and-forth thread, Facebook zips you down to the most recent message so you don’t have to read through the long list of exchanges and hunt for the latest one. To reply to the message, simply type your response in the Reply box, and then click Send. To delete the message without replying, click the Delete button near the top of your screen. ChattingFacebook’s built-in chat feature lets you send messages to friends who are online when you are. Because chat messages—unlike regular Facebook messages—pop up on your friends’ screens immediately after you send them, they’re handy for exchanging quick updates. (“Hey, we still meeting for lunch in 5 minutes?” “Yeah, I’m headed out the door now!”) To send a chat message:
NoteBecause chat messages can pop up on your screen, they can be seriously annoying. To keep super-chatty folks from being able to chat with you, put them on a list (Organizing Your Friends) named, say, SuperChatties. Then, in the Chat box (at the bottom of any Facebook screen, click Chat), click the Friend Lists tab and make sure the checkbox next to the SuperChatties list is turned on. Then when SuperChatties appears in the chat box, click the green-and-white Go Offline icon (it looks like a capsule on its side) to the right of the list’s name. Doing so hides the fact that you’re online and, therefore, “chattable” from everyone on the SuperChatties list and changes the green-and-white Go Offline icon to a grey-and-white Go Online icon (which you can click when you’re in the mood to field one of those long-winded conversations). If you don’t feel like chatting with anyone, in the Chat window, click the Options tab and then click Go Offline. When someone sends you a chat message, Facebook plays a sound and up pops the Chat window, where you see the sender’s profile picture along with their message. To reply, simply type your message in the bottom of the window and hit Enter. TipYou can customize the Chat window so that it stays up all the time instead of popping up, and so that it doesn’t play a sound every time someone chats at you—both of which are useful if you expect to do a lot of chatting. In the Chat window (at the bottom of any Facebook screen, click Chat), click Options. Then turn off the checkbox next to “Play Sound for New Messages” and turn on the checkbox next to “Keep Online Friends Window Open”. PokingPoking sounds a lot more provocative than it is. Giving someone a poke in Facebook is nothing more than the electronic equivalent of asking someone, “Hey, what’s up?” Pokes appear as a “You were poked by [name]” message on the recipient’s Home page. TipPoking—like sneaking up behind someone and tapping her shoulder—isn’t really good for much beyond the yuk factor. Depending on you and your pals’ tolerance for friendly nudging, poking either gets the award for Silliest Social Aid or Most Annoying Thing Ever. If you’re in the latter camp, you’ll find notifications (Customizing Your Mini Feed) similar but more useful. NoteYou can poke any Facebook member—you don’t have to be friends with the pokee or belong to the same network. But if you poke someone who doesn’t normally have access to your profile, be aware that he’ll be able to see the basic, work-, and education-related portions of your profile for a week post-poke. But letting a pokee see your profile is rarely a problem. After all, if you’re that worried somebody might discover your passion for the Bay City Rollers, you shouldn’t poke him in the first place. To poke someone:
Writing on WallsOne of the sections on every Facebook member’s profile is a forum called the Wall. A Wall is a place for your Facebook pals to share interesting photos, videos, websites, and character insights. By default, the only people’s Walls you can write on are your own and your friends’. But since Walls are part of profiles, anyone who can view your profile can see your Wall messages. You can think of Walls as a 21st-century version of the dry-erase message boards they used to have in dorm rooms: an informal place to brag, tease, show solidarity, get attention, and occasionally impart useful information. TipYou can find several Facebook applications (such as FunWall, SuperWall, and Graffiti) that let you add photos, video clips, and even virtual spray paint to your friends’ Walls. Flip to Facebook Applications: An Overview to learn about applications. Writing on a Friend’s WallWriting on someone’s Wall is a more public way of expressing yourself than sending your friend a message, because all your friend’s friends will see your Wall post (unless you remember to tell Facebook to keep it between you and your friend, as explained on Writing on a Friend’s Wall). Good candidates for Wall posts include thanks, congratulations, birthday greetings, and other tidbits your shared connections might find interesting or useful. TipTo write on your own Wall, follow the steps below, but start at your own profile instead of a friend’s. If you like, you can adjust who sees the stuff you put on your own Wall by clicking the Options link (look just below the Share button on your profile) and then clicking Settings. To write on a friend’s Wall:
NoteSome Facebook applications (Facebook Applications: An Overview) let you attach other stuff to the messages you post on people’s Walls. The Graffiti application, for example, lets you decorate your friend’s Wall with virtual spray paint. Responding to a Wall PostWhen someone writes on your Wall, you can have a chuckle and leave it at that—or you can respond in one of the following ways:
Sending GiftsA Facebook gift is a virtual greeting card–style icon you can send to someone, accompanied by a personal message. You can choose from hundreds of professionally designed graphics, most of them of the smiley-face-and-teddy-bear variety. After you send a gift, it appears on the recipient’s profile—in the Gifts section, on the recipient’s Wall, or both, depending on whether you decide to make the gift public or private. NoteThe occasional exchange of gifts is part of what of what makes any good relationship tick—online and off. In recognition of this, Facebook has made it easy for members to give each other not just virtual gifts, but music clips, charitable-donations-in-the-name-of gifts, and even actual, physical gifts (think chocolate!). Facebook charges for its gifts in credits. Currently, one Facebook credit will set you back ten cents, and the average virtual gift costs 10 credits ($1); you pay by entering your credit card or cellphone number at the end of the gift-giving process. (Real-life gifts, as you may have guessed, run anywhere from a bit to a lot pricier.) To get around the $1 price tag for virtual gifts, check out the Free Gifts application (see Facebook Applications: An Overview). NoteAs this book went to press, there were rumors that you’d soon be able to pay for Facebook credits using PayPal, so don’t be surprised if you see that option, too. To send someone a Facebook gift:
Where is the inbox in Facebook?Tap in the top right of Facebook. Tap Pages, then go to your Page. Tap Inbox at the top of the Page.
What does it mean to inbox someone on Facebook?Inbox, means the place where messages come in, so if someone says to you, “ inbox me" on messenger, they usually just mean to send them a private message instead of sending it on their page or in their comments.
Is Facebook inbox the same as Messenger?If you've been upgraded to the new Messenger interface on Facebook.com, you'll notice a few subtle changes to the user interface, when accessed from the desktop. For starters, the previous inbox icon has been replaced with the Messenger icon in the blue navigation bar at the top of the screen.
How do you inbox someone on Facebook who is not your friend?Click either the “Send [Name] a Message” link (which you find on a person's profile below their picture) or the “Send a Message” link (which you find in search results). Whichever link you click, up pops the Compose Message box shown on Sending Messages to People You're Not (Yet) Friends With.
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