Facebook: The Missing Manual
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 Do web apps need manuals? |
| Review Date: March 22, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Imran Ali, West Yorkshire, UK |
I guess with their increasing complexity, web applications are beginning to need manuals to extract the maximum value for users.
Like offline applications, most users utilise only a small portion of the available features of web-based applications. Facebook: The Missing Manual is a handy reminder of the breadth of content and services available to users of the iconic application, helping the user to explore beyond their usual daily routine.
The book is divided into sections on joining networks and making connections; groups and shopping; doing business and finally privacy.
The latter two areas appear to be the most interesting as they explore areas that most users rarely utilise and notably privacy is an area where many have a naive understanding of etiquette and the tools available to them.
I'd like to have seen more case studies - good and bad - of real users, and perhaps some anecdotal, real-world examples of usage in each area of the book...perhaps the more exceptional use cases.
However, the books reads well and is an inexpensive primer in the less-visited utility of Facebook.
But when the cycle of development for web services is now measured in hours, perhaps books with print cycles of weeks and months will never be able to remain relevant for long.
For now - this title is useful enough to drop a tenner on :) |
Good book though the pace of change may be too much for it!
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| Review Date: March 14, 2008 |
| Reviewer: renaissance geek, UK |
As you would expect from O'Reilly, Facebook the missing manual is a readable easy access book which takes the user from social networking neophyte to fully connected social nexus. The book manages to pack far more information than your average user would ever want into its 250(ish) pages. While the main body of the text is excellent, as with many O'Reilly products it's the background information which are the real gems.
Of particular interest to anyone venturing into the world of social networking is the chapter on privacy. In fact I would like to have seen much of the introductory material from this chapter appear earlier in the book to inform potential users of the possible dangers of putting too much personal information online before leading them through the signup procedure. The privacy chapter is augmented up by some nice common sense tips and comments scattered liberally through the book, such as "If you wouldn't feel comfortable heading to your local community centre and tacking up a flyer listing your phone number and street address, you probably don't want to add these details to your Facebook profile". Obvious perhaps but it bears frequent repeating.
However the manual does have some problems. Some of the comments do leave you wondering what exactly is meant by the author. For example the book tells you that for your year of birth to "make sure that the year you choose puts you over age 12 - Facebook doesn't let under-13s use the site"; which makes you wonder if they are advocating altering a false year of birth to gain access? The main problem with the book however is the fact that it is addressing a fast moving arena via a slow moving medium. The first printing of Facebook the missing manual was January 2008 and as of February 2008 there are already plans to revamp the site, so how accurate the technical information in the manual will remain and for how long is very much open for debate.
Problems aside, this is a well written and very readable introduction to Facebook in particular and social networking in general and well worth the price of admission. |
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Facebook: The Missing Manual: – http://tinyurl.com/mvanat
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