Friends

Hi, my name is Vikki Vaughan, and today we'll discuss one of the main uses of Facebook: connecting with friends. When we friend someone on Facebook, we have access to each other's activities and we share ideas. We do this through our newsfeed stories, photos, and videos. In today's workshop, we'll learn how to search for and add a friend, accept a friend's request and learn how to control who can friend us. We'll also talk about what it means to follow celebrities, groups and businesses that we're interested in.

This series is intended for people with low vision. If you use a screen reader, be sure to check out Hadley's screen reading version of this series.

We've already logged into our account and find ourselves on our homepage. Let's start out with searching for friends. In the top left corner, we find an edit field. It contains a magnifying glass icon with the words Search Facebook. I happen to know that my friend William Hadley is on Facebook, so I'll look for him. I'll place my cursor in the search edit field, type in his name and press the enter key.

Now it's helpful to include both first and last names to narrow our search. A window opens that displays a list of possible names and profile pictures that match or are close to matching William's name. We find someone named William Hadley in the list. His profile picture and his hometown of Winnetka help us identify him as the person we are looking for. Facebook suggests that we use a picture of ourselves along with some identifying information in our profile. This helps friends find us more easily.

Next to William's name, we have a button labeled Add Friend. Let's select it with our mouse pointer. When William accepts our request, we'll be able to see each other's posts and exchange messages. Now he doesn't have to send us back a friend request. Once he accepts, we're good to go. If we don't see the Add Friend button, it's because the person we're trying to befriend has adjusted their privacy settings to block friend request.

How do we know when someone has sent us a friend request? Let's find out. We'll go to our address bar and type in facebook.com/fine-friends. Then we press our enter key. If we have any requests they will be displayed in the larger window to the right. We simply select the confirm button and voila, we're friends. If we don't wish to be Facebook friends, we choose the delete button. When we delete a friend request, the person who sent the request is not notified. They cannot send us another request for one year. Facebook allows us to control who can add us as a friend. Let's find out how.

We'll select our account button in the top right corner of our homepage. In the dropdown menu let's tab down to Settings & Privacy and press the Enter key to open.

Now we select our first option, Settings. In the left pane, we'll select privacy. In the right pane, we scroll down to the heading, How People Find and Contact You. The first option is, Who can send you friend request? We select the edit link to the far right.

We now have a dropdown box and when we select it, we find two choices. Everyone or Friends of Friends. The last option, Friends of Friends, means that you'll only receive suggestions from either people you know directly or someone who shares a mutual friendship with you. Once we've made our selection, we choose the close button to the right. If you'd like more information about unfriending or blocking someone on Facebook check out the resource below this workshop.

You may have heard a term associated with Facebook and other social media platforms called Following. An example might be following pages of organizations, brands, and businesses. Whenever we like a page we automatically start following it. A good example is Hadley's Page. Let's check it out.

We're on our homepage. Now we'll search for Hadley. Let's place our cursor in the search edit field in the top left corner. We type in Hadley, and a list of possible matches appears below the search field. In the list we find Hadley with our logo. Let's select it with our mouse pointer.

At the top of the page, we find Hadley's Facebook account. When we select the follow button, we start following Hadley and we'll see their post in our newsfeed. We can also follow public figures like celebrities, athletes, and musicians. This allows us to follow people without having to share a connection through a friend request. Once we follow someone, their post will appear in our newsfeed.

In today's workshop we explored searching for potential Facebook friends. We also learned how to send a friend request as well as check for requests from others. We discovered how to control who can send us a friend request. Lastly, we learned all about following public figures, organizations, and businesses. I'm Vikki Vaughan and I thank you for joining me.