Facebook: The Missing Manual

Chapter 2. Joining a Network

What Facebook does best is track connections between people who’ve joined the site. The easiest way to make a bunch of Facebook connections in one fell swoop is to join a network—a group of people who have work or school in common: in other words, fellow employees at a company or graduates and current attendees of a particular school. Joining a network takes a lot of the grunt work out of finding interesting real-world groups and events, shopping for local stuff, and contacting real-life friends and coworkers. You can’t just join any ol’ network, though—there are some restrictions, as this chapter explains. And if you want to create a new network, you can suggest it to Facebook. Read on for the full scoop.

Note

Facebook used to let you join regional networks based on where you live, but the company recently decided that these networks weren’t worth the trouble and pulled them. After all, it’s unlikely you’re friends with everyone in your town just because they happen to live in your town. So no more regional networks on Facebook.

How Networks Work

A Facebook network is simply a group of people who work or go to school (or who used to work or go to school) in the same place. You’ll probably want to join at least one network as soon as you register, because until you do, the only folks whose profiles you can see are those you specifically tell Facebook you want to be friends with (see Chapter 3).

Note

You can’t see a network member’s profile until you join that ...