SWS - South Atlantic Chapter Facebook Group Page

Society of Wetland Scientists
South Atlantic Chapter

Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia,
West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands

What Is/Are:
Tips & Warnings | Features of Facebook | History of Facebook | Definitions | Common Acronyms

***Please note, some words on this page have been defined as noted with a double underline. Clicking the word will take you to its definition found at the bottom of this page.***

How to Join Facebook:
Millions of people have joined this social network community. So where do you begin? (If you are already a member of Facebook and just want to know how to join our group, skip to next section.)

Visit the Facebook website at www.facebook.com and then click "Sign Up" button.
Fill in your full name, a valid email address, and your birthdate. Don't forget to add your high school, college, and work information in the "I am" section.
Choose your password. Enter an easy password to remember - but a hard one for others to figure out. It needs to be at least six characters long and you'll want to have some non-letter characters as well. (e.g., "thisismypassword123")
Complete the image verification check. Identify the words or numbers displayed and type them in (capitalization and spaces do not count).
Don't forget to read the “Terms of Use” and “Privacy Policy.” Check the box to mark your agreement with the terms of both.
Click on the “Sign Up Now!” button at the bottom of the page and wait for redirection to a thank you page.
Check your email inbox for an email from Facebook which will contain a link to the confirmation page for your registration.
Welcome to Facebook - now you are ready to join our group. =)

Tips & Warnings:

If you run into problems registering, visit the Facebook Help section at www.facebook.com/help/.
Many find it useful, if you want reconnect with old friends, to use previous names (such as a maiden name) for middle name when you sign up. If you want to change your name on Facebook or assign yourself an alias, search www.facebook.com/help/.
If you want to keep your profile as private as possible, avoid joining a regional network, which is open to anyone.
Facebook sends you alerts, updates and other news feeds to your email account, unless you change those settings, so choose an email to which you don't mind receiving this information. Also, do not reply directly to these emails as you well get an error notification. For instance, if you've received a message from a friend to your Facebook account, use the link in the notification email Facebook sends you to log onto Facebook in order to respond to said message.
Choose a password with a combination of numbers and letters, but don't make it so difficult that you hate signing in all the time or you can't ever remember it. Your Facebook account holds a lot of personal information about you, so you don't want your password to be easy to guess.
DBEYR!! Nothing is given for free despite the advertisements on Facebook would suggest (acai berry pills, Nikon cameras, etc.), Facebook isn’t closing in 7 days (the case between Facebook and rival ConnectU has been settled, for now) and Facebook does not have unlimited use of your personal photos nor do their advertisers. Google any of these stories for details.

How to join our group:
Now that you have a Facebook account you may join our group - South Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Wetland Scientists. Why join? Once a member you may interact with other chapter members online, as well as keep up with Chapter news and events.

In the top left corner is a search box. Just type in the name of the group as you see above, press Enter after you've typed in the group name and it'll come up with one or more matches that give you a variety of details. We should be the very top search, just click on the group name.

Or Click the link to the South Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Wetland Scientists Group Page and if you are not currently logged onto Facebook you will be prompted to do so and then be directed to the group page.
Once on the group page, you will not be able to see any details until you become a member. Just below the SWS-SAC logo is the link to "Join This Group". Click on it and you'll get a confirmation dialog. An email will then be sent to one of the group administrators and we will approve your membership.
Once you're a member you will be able to enjoy all the posts, chapter event updates, discussions and photos. Please don't hesitate to add to group conversations, including your wetland or society-related photos!

How To find the group page after you’ve joined:
There are actually several ways to do this. One is to select your profile page (by clicking on your name in the blue title bar across the top), and then selecting the “Info” tab next to the “Wall” tab (they look like folder tabs on top). Near the bottom on the info page there is a listing of all the groups you have joined, select “South Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Wetland Scientists.”

What to do once on the group page:

To start a new discussion: click the "Start Topic" link under the "Discussion Board" header. Enter a title and write your post.
To join an ongoing discussion: click on the topic name. You can then see all posts on the topic. Next, select either "Reply to Topic" or reply to a specific post.
To post a photo: scroll down to the photos section of the group page and click the “Add a photo” link. An interface with your computer will open and if this is the first time you are doing this you will have to download that interface first. Select the photos you'd like to upload by clicking on a check box next to the picture and choosing "Upload." Make sure to agree to the Terms of Use before selecting the "Upload Photos" link. (Please note, you cannot move to multiple folders on your computer during one uploading session.) Once the photos are uploaded you will be prompted to give them titles and descriptions and to tag them if you desire.
To tag a photo: Choose a photo to tag by clicking on the photo's thumbnail. It will enlarge after you click on it. Select the "Tag This Photo" link right below the photo. When you mouse over the photo, the cursor should become a crosshair. Click on the person you want to tag – a dialogue box should appear. You can then begin to type a name and if that name matches any of your friends the dialogue box will give you the option of linking the tag to that friend. Mind you, you can tag an area of the photo with anything you want, such as “this was my favorite pooch Dusty” or rather in our case “does anyone know the name of this plant?”
For more how-to’s search www.ehow.com.

Some of the Features of Facebook:

News Feed - The news feed feature on Facebook has been available since mid 2006. Originally, when users logged into Facebook, they were presented with a customizable version of their own profile. The new layout, by contrast, created an alternate home page in which users saw a constantly updated list of their friends' Facebook activity. News Feed highlights information that includes profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays, among other updates. News Feed also shows conversations taking place between the walls of a user's friends. Please note that users are able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends.

Wall - The Wall is a space on each user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see while displaying the time and date the message was written. One user's wall is visible to anyone with the ability to see his or her full profile, and different users' wall posts show up in an individual's News Feed. Many users use their friends' walls for leaving short, temporal notes. More private discourse is saved for Messages, which are sent to a person's inbox, and are visible only to the sender and recipient(s) of the Message, much like email.

Photos - One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums of photos, tag friends, and comment on photos. Tagging photos is a great way of identifying friends in photos and sharing them. For instance, if a photo contains a user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo as well as placing the photo in their “Photos of Me” album.

Notes - Facebook Notes is a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users are also able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services. One of the most popular use of Notes is the email game of "25 Random Things About Me" which involves writing 25 things about the user that their friends don't already know about them and using the tag function to ask 25 friends to also do so. Nearly 5 million "25 Random Things" notes were written on Facebook profiles in the first week of February 2009.

Events - Facebook events are a way for members to let friends know about upcoming events in their community and to organize social gatherings. Events require an event name, network, host name, event type, start and end time, location, and a guest list of friends invited. Events can be open, closed, or secret. When setting up an event the user can choose to allow friends to upload photos or videos.

Networks and Groups - Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join. It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions and events etc. Groups are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects. They are increasingly used by clubs, companies and public sector organizations to engage with stakeholders - be they members of the public, employees, members, service users, shareholders or customers. A group is comprised of but not limited to the following: the members who have joined, recent news contents, discussion board contents, wall contents, photos, posted items, videos and all associated comments of such items.

Apps – This is short for the term “platform applications,” which are created by third party developers (not Facebook) to interact with core Facebook features. They include useful interfacing tools as well as multiplayer games such as scrabble and poker to the wildly popular “Mafia Wars.” With the number of apps rising well over 14 thousand, the variety of applications available on Facebook is endless. Please note, do not bog down your Facebook experience, your computer and your valuable time downloading all these apps. Research what they do, if they will be useful to you, and most importantly, if they are safe (previous apps have been discovered to be viral or attempts to phish users’ information).

UserNames – Most recently, Facebook introduced a feature that allowed users to choose a Facebook username to make user location easier. The user is able to direct others to their page through a simple link such as "www.facebook.com/username" rather than an otherwise complex URL. This feature on Facebook quickly spread, with more than 50,000 users registering usernames in the first 24 hours. Usernames are now available to any existing or newly registered user.

Background and History of Facebook:

Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of a book given to incoming students at Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg's, high school alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. The book shows the faces and names of the school's students and faculty.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 250 million active users worldwide.

What do all those new terms mean?

Blog or Blogging - A Web site (or section of a Web site) where users can post a chronological, up-to-date e-journal entry of their thoughts. Basically, it is an open forum communication tool that is either very individualistic or performs a crucial function for an organization or company. There are three basic varieties of blogs: those that post links to other sources, those that compile news and articles, and those that provide a forum for opinions and commentary. Facebook blogging tool is the Notes section.

Download (Upload) – To transfer a file or files from one computer to another, for example, from an online server to your desktop computer or laptop. To upload is the exact opposite – to transfer from your computer to the web (online server or host). There are a few methods of downloading on the Internet: HTTP, FTP and e-mail attachments are the most common. As a matter of fact, when you "load" a Web page into your browser (AKA view it), you are essentially "downloading" the page from the server it is hosted on.

Phish or Phishing (pronounced: fish-ing) - An online scam in which the perpetrator sends out a large number of legitimate looking e-mails that appear to come from respected companies (such as Citibank, eBay, PayPal, MSN, Amazon.com, Yahoo, Best Buy, AOL, etc.) with the intent of "fishing" for personal and financial information from the recipient. These e-mails are falsely claiming to be the respected company who needs the user's information to update their files, when in fact, it is an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will later be used for identity theft. Please note that legitimate companies such as Citibank, etc., will NEVER request your personal or account information over email.

Tag or Tagging (as in a photo) - Tags are really nothing more than keywords used to describe a piece of data — be it a web page, a digital photo, or another type of digital document. To tag a photo on a photoshare site or on your computer is like giving it keywords searchable in a digital card catalogue. HOWEVER, tagging a photo in Facebook goes beyond that. You are actually naming people in a photo so that when the photo is hovered over by the curser, a dialogue box will appear with that person’s name (very useful for old photos of bygone days as well as group pix). In addition, if you tag a photo on Facebook with someone that is on your friends list then that friend will be notified of the tag and that photo of them will appear on THEIR Facebook profile as well.

Texting Acronyms – Shorthand for words or phrases commonly used in text messages, online chat forums and blogs/posts. Some common ones you may see on our group page are:

BTW – By The Way

IMHO - In My Humble Opinion

LOL - Laughing Out Loud

ROTFL – Rolling On The Floor Laughing

TIA - Thanks In Advance

YWIA - You're Welcome In Advance

DBEYR - Don't Believe Everything You Read

URL - Abbreviation of Uniform Resource Locator, this term refers to the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web. For example http://www.sws.org/regional/SouthAtlantic/facebook.html is the URL for this webpage. BTW, HTTP is short for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, which is used to view a web page that is on the Internet. In contrast, FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is used to upload and/or download files directly from a file server (remote computer hooked to the Internet) often requiring users to log in to said server.

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