Facebook: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. Facebook Mobile

Facebook can be addictive. If you’re away from a computer and feel the need to check in on your Facebook friends or update your status, you can use Facebook Mobile on your cellphone to stay in the loop. Whether you travel a lot or just like to stay connected when you’re between work and home, Facebook Mobile is a handy way to access Facebook without a computer.

How Facebook Mobile Works

Facebook Mobile is an application (Facebook Applications: An Overview) that lets you use your Internet-ready cellphone to:

• Interact with Facebook on your phone’s teensy-tiny screen. Facebook’s Mobile Web feature (Using Facebook Mobile) lets you use the browser on your cellphone to see a scaled-down version of the Facebook Web site. Using your phone’s keypad, you can do things like update your status, find out what your friends are doing, look up peoples’ phone numbers, and keep tabs on the groups and events you’ve signed up for.

• Interact with Facebook via text messages. The Mobile Texts feature (Interacting with Facebook via Text Message) lets you do things on Facebook from your phone without having to go through the mobile version of the Facebook Web site. (This option is usually faster than the Mobile Web feature, and is the way to go if your phone doesn’t have a Web browser; you will, of course, need to be able to send text messages.) If you want to write a quickie message on a friend’s wall, for example, you can text message a specific Facebook code (see Interacting with ...