Is there any way to find out how Facebook works without joining Facebook? I've lived happily without it thus far, but some people I like have asked to be my Facebook friend and, of course, I'd have to join it to do that...there doesn't seem to be anything on the site that shows how it works unless one registers. I'd like to know what it is and what it does before jumping in!
It's fairly simple - you create a profile with some basic info about yourself. You can fill in as much or as little as you like, you can also make your profile private so only friends can see it. You then "friend" people.
You can update your status as you like like "<ME> is going to the mall today", which then will show up on all your friend's news feeds. You'll see the same thing from all your friends as well.
Friends can send you private messages, or post public messages to your "wall".
You can also post pictures for people to see, and tag who's in the pictures.
You can also organize events, kinda like evite.
There's other various applications that you can "install" for your account and quizes you can take. I suggest not doing so as many of those things are just ways to mine data. So I don't use them.
