Facebook Basics: Creating a Personal Facebook Account

Step one in getting connected with Facebook is to create your personal Facebook account. Your personal account is referred to by Facebook as your personal profile and it is your gateway to all the social networking features Facebook has to offer, including creating and managing business/fan pages. Dave Taylor from Ask Dave Taylor! walks through the process with his great step by step tutorial:

Step 1. To get started, go to http://www.facebook.com/ and you’ll see right on the home page:

Fill this in and click on “Sign Up”.

Step 2. You’ll be asked to verify that you’re not a robot really! it’s a measure to prevent spammers infecting Facebook with bogus accounts:

Enter the two words you see — in this case “view” and “doorways” — and click on “Sign Up” again on this page.You’re in! You have an account set up on Facebook.

Step 3. You’re not done, however. First up, it’ll suggest some friends you might connect with:

I have no idea who these two people are, so perhaps they’re special potential friends to everyone who joins Facebook, I dunno. Since Facebook isn’t much fun without friends being online and connected with you, the system tries all sorts of ways for you to identify your potential friends.

Step 4. Next up is its ability to scan your address book:

If you’d rather not have Facebook scan your mailbox and figure out your correspondences, no worries, just click on “Skip this step”.

Step 5. Next attempt to match you: enter your high school, place of work, or some other sort of identifying information:

Fill this in and click “Save & Continue”. 

Step 6. Next step is to set up a profile picture for yourself, something I highly recommend:

Click “Save & Continue” and you’re set and will be dropped onto your new, relatively austere, Facebook news feed page. Along the top it’ll remind you that the system has sent an email to confirm your email address, entered in step one:

Step 7. In your email inbox you should get a message that looks like this:

Click on the link and you’ll have confirmed that the email address you entered is legit. Now you’re good to go on Facebook and it’s time to start sending friend requests and filling in all your personal information so others can find you too.

via How do I sign up / create a Facebook account? :: Free Tech Support :: Ask Dave Taylor!®.

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