Facebook features (1/2)

• Home

The home page is the page where you arrive once you are connected. You get the facebook canvas which is the navigator that you will use all the time during you navigation in the website. We are basically talking about the blue frame here.
The important thing about the home page is that it is your "dash-board". You can access everything from here and especially this is here that you get all the feeds from your network. Indeed, in the central panel you have the list of the feeds that your network product. This is basically what your friends did: adding pictures, adding groups, writing messages on wall (see bellow), creating events, ... You also have updates such as the incoming birthdays, your status and your friend's status, ...

• Profile

The profile is your personal page. It displays the information you want to be public about you. It is divide in several section such as your general information (sex, date of birth, ...), your interests, your education and work, you album photos, your wall, your list of friends, your groups, your applications, ... The wall is a public board where all your friends can write, the message will however be public and display into your profile.

• Friends
  

In this page is display your list of friends. You have different way to sort it: by networks, by "last added", by "last updates", ... For each friend you have the possibility to go to his profile, send him a message, poke him, view his friends or also remove him. You also have a search engine on this page which allow you to get your friend more quickly, it is really useful when you have a long list.

• Networks

Facebook is now a world size network, but it is actually the addiction of several smaller networks. If you take my example, I registered to the website with a email from the ou.edu domain which is relevant to the Oklahoma network, but I am also part of the France network and the Napier University network. A network is a community of persons, something like an internal world. You can for example access directly the profile of the people of your network (except when the person has change its privacy), that's something you can't do (unless adding the person) when the person is not from your network. In the network page you have the number of members, discusion boards, upcoming events, ...

In the next post I will speak about the other features of Facebook : Inbox, Photos, Groups, Events, Applications, Privacy, ...