Chapter 8
In This Chapter
Sending a message to friends and nonfriends
Chatting with multiple friends
Making video calls
Using Facebook e-mail addresses
Communicating with your friends goes far beyond the timeline, where everyone can see your conversation. Private conversations on Facebook come in several forms. With Facebook’s messaging features, you can connect with friends by text chat (or instant messaging), by video calls, through private e-mail–like messages, and from your message inbox. You can even create chat conversations with groups of friends.
In this chapter, we cover all the aspects of private messaging on Facebook. We describe how to initiate messages or chats with your friends, as well as how to initiate video calls and group chats.
The many options for communicating on Facebook give you a lot to think about. Fear not, for all Facebook messaging features are integrated seamlessly. First, we provide an overview of the types of message options, and then we explain how each works and how you can use them in later sections.
When it comes to private conversations, Facebook has the following messaging functions:
You can send messages on Facebook several ways. The following sections discuss your options.
Sending a Facebook message is one of the most popular ways to interact privately with friends, business pages, and others you may not be connected with yet. Messages are closely integrated with Facebook chat — those two features often overlap. This section explains how to use Facebook messaging to contact others (we’ll explain chat right after).
Messages between you and a friend are organized in one continuous stream. Chat and message histories are threaded together. Essentially, all your private communication with a friend is combined in one place, regardless of the format of the conversation. If you turn on text updates, messages exchanged with that friend via text are stored in the message thread as well.
You can send a friend a message from the following places in Facebook:
With all these methods, the screen displays your Facebook inbox.
To send a message to a friend, navigate to your Facebook inbox and follow these steps:
A new message box opens where you can compose your message.
As you begin typing, relevant names of friends appear. As you type, the results narrow. Click to select a name in the list. Or, to select the top name, press Enter.
If you select this check box, and want to start a new paragraph in the message, press Shift+Enter.
Your friend receives a notification of the message almost instantly.
After you send your message, you can click the Actions link in the upper-right corner, next to the +New Message button. Doing this will provide you with options to edit that message thread, as shown in Figure 8-5. Note: Messages that include more than one person will display additional options such as Create Group, Add People, and Leave Conversation.
Sending messages to someone who is not a friend (someone who is not on your Facebook Friends list) works similarly to sending messages to friends. Because the person isn’t on your Friends list, when you type her name in the New Message screen, it won't show up. To send her a message, you have to start by visiting her timeline.
To get to her timeline, type her name in the search text box at the top of your home page. Relevant results appear as you type. Click her name to go to her timeline. On her timeline, click the Message button in the lower-right corner of her cover photo. The New Message dialog box appears; type your message as you normally would.
When people receive messages from a person they don’t know, they may be naturally suspicious. To avoid that, make sure you provide context in the content of your message. You’re more likely to receive a response if you explain how you know each other (mutual friends, for example) and why you’re contacting the person. In other words, include a message such as “We met at the Indianapolis Volleyball Competition.”
When you and a friend are logged in to Facebook at the same time, you can exchange messages instantly and enjoy a real-time conversation. Real-time messaging also comes in the form of video calls in the chat screen — Facebook integrates with Skype to provide this feature (as described later in the chapter).
When you are logged in to Facebook, an adjustable box appears in the right sidebar below the Facebook ticker. This box contains a list of friends with green dots by their names. These are your friends who are online (or were recently online). If you previously had your chat sidebar open, it may appear this way by default when you log in again.
Click any one of the names, and a chat box appears at the bottom of your browser screen. Type your message in the text box to chat.
At the bottom of the chat window, you can search for contacts. Click the gear icon to turn off chat, enable chat sounds, or chat from the desktop. You can also hide the right-hand sidebar.
How about getting all your friends together, no matter what part of the world they're in? You can easily invite several people into a chat conversation. To do so, follow these steps:
You are inviting additional friends into your chat conversation.
You can always turn off chat while you are logged in to Facebook. Simply click the gear icon at the bottom of your chat list and choose Go Offline.
You can also turn on or off sounds. Click the gear icon at the bottom of the right sidebar (chat list) and select or deselect Chat Sounds. When a check mark appears next to Chat Sounds, you hear a little blip sound when someone sends you a chat.
If you want to limit your chat availability to people in certain groups, you can do so. Limiting your availability can be nearly as specific as the privacy settings for your timeline and status updates. With Facebook’s group settings (which we talk about in Book II, Chapter 5), you can make yourself available only to specific lists or to anyone except a specific list.
Figure 8-8 shows how you can hide yourself from a friend. Click the friend’s name, and then click the gear icon in the dialog box that appears. Choose Turn Off Chat for [Name] and that person won’t see you as available to chat.
Figure 8-9 shows how you can use the Advanced Chat settings to limit who sees you on chat. To use the Advanced Chat settings, click the gear icon at the bottom of your chat sidebar and choose Advanced Settings. The dialog box in Figure 8-9 appears. From here, just select the settings you want to implement and then click Save.
Talking with your friends face to face no longer requires that you be in the same room. Facebook has integrated Skype video-calling features that make it possible for you to video chat with any of your friends, so long as you both have a web camera connected to your computers.
When you initiate a video call for the first time, you need to complete a quick one-time setup. Then you see a Call button on your friend’s profile page or chat box if he or she has also set up video chat.
To set up video chat, you must first initiate a call with a friend:
You’re asked to set up video calling, as shown in Figure 8-10.
The file is a plugin that Facebook needs on your computer for video calling to work.
Facebook initiates the call with your friend. In the top-right portion of the screen is what your friend sees, as shown in Figure 8-11. The big picture is where you see your friend. To end the call, click the Close (X) button in the top-right corner (Windows) or the red button in the top-left corner (Mac).
When you sign up for Facebook, you're issued an e-mail account with the address username@facebook.com. You have one opportunity to change that address. To do so, you must change your username. Facebook will update the new address and it will be added to your contact info in the About section of your timeline.
Facebook e-mail addresses provide an e-mail platform that is similar to traditional e-mail services (such as Gmail or Yahoo!). Facebook e-mail addresses provide a seamless integration with Facebook messaging, which essentially expands your communications reach.
The biggest limitation to Facebook e-mail is that a message you send to an e-mail address from Facebook is limited in terms of content by Facebook’s features. You can attach only what Facebook allows you to attach, and there is no subject line.