Into to Facebook for Journalists

Who’s on Facebook?

More than 100 million Americans are on Facebook – and they aren’t all fitting the site’s youthful stereotype. In fact, 63% of U.S. users are over the age of 25 – and the growth in users over 55 grew by 922% in 2009. More demographics

Why use it for work?

Lots of your beat contacts, local institutions, competition and brands are using Facebook as a primary connection tool – occasionally releasing exclusive info there.

Personal/Professional Accounts

It is against the Facebook Terms of Service for one person to have two accounts. I would recommend setting up your account contacts and privacy settings to maintain personal and professional relationships all in one place. More on that below.

On “Friending” and “Liking”

These terms may sound a little too chummy for a source/journalist relationship, but they are necessary ways to get info on Facebook. If you feel uncomfortable with such a relationship, you may choose to put a note on your account explaining that some of your contacts are strictly professional.

Facebook Glossary

Profile: A profile is the home base for your individual Facebook account. Only regular (non-corporate) users can have a Facebook profile.

Page: Facebook also has pages (sometimes called Fan pages) for companies, groups, non-profits, celebrities and dozens of other institutions. It has some different features than a profile, including analytics and multiple admin functions.

Group: This in an inter-connected collection of Facebook users around a common purpose. Groups have discussions boards and members can share photos, videos and comments. You may choose to start a group for your family or for a group of sources to share information.

Status updates: This is similar to Twitter, a sort of “What are you doing”. It usually starts with YourName is ________. This goes into your public wall and news feed and the news feed of other people.

Newsfeed: This is the stream of activity from your contacts on Facebook – their status updates, added photos, shared links and more. This is how a growing number of people – especially young people – get their news.

Wall: This is your own personal newsfeed – all of your added friends, comments you’ve left on other pages, shared links, added photos and more. Other people can also comment on whatever shows up here. This information is generally shared outwardly to other people on their newsfeeds, but you can specify the visibility of this info to particular friends or contact groups using the privacy settings (see below).

Friends or Friending: Anyone who “friends” you on Facebook is giving you access to their profile and status updates. Upon accepting “friendship”, you are also giving this access to your own account.

“Liking”: This used to be known as being a “fan”. You can “like” pages, individual news stories, status updates and more on Facebook and increasingly across the Internet. It doesn’t always mean you actually like the item. Depending on the context and item, it could also be a way to subscribe to more info from the source or recommend it to others.

Applications: These are add-ons people have built to make profiles and pages more useful or fun. These can be games, additions to your profile to tell people something about you or useful tools to enhance your profile or use offline. If you want, try searching Facebook for something you like – anything – and see what comes up under the Applications tab.

Invites: You’ll get emails if a friend has invited you to use an Application they like. These are usually causes they care about, a game they’re taking part in or some other Facebook contest. Much like a chain letter, these apps are designed only to get as many people added as possible, so every time you accept one of these application invites, it’ll ask you to invite others (hit “skip” if you don’t want to).

“Tagging”: Friends can “tag” you in a photo, video, status update or note, which means they have publicly noted your profile in relation to whatever they “tagged”. This will place a link to that content into your news feed where anyone can see it. You might not want this to happen (see privacy settings).

Facebook Search & Directory: The search bar at the top of your Facebook page is valuable. Look here to find the pages, images, groups and events for story subjects, sources and organizations.

More:

Setting up an All-Purpose Facebook Account

Sharing Your Content on Facebook

© Mandy Jenkins Copyright 2009