On The Road to Mastering Facebook

On the Road to Mastering Facebook

  First feature of Facebook that I want to note is the messaging capability. Facebook allows its users to directly message individuals, created groups, and even groups of people that an user wishes to select. Facebook allows its users to check whether the sent message was read and/or delivered to the recipients. Although some people actually do not use Facebook Message because of that feature, yet it provides a clear cut communication device that allows to monitor whether the message was delivered successfully or not. The group messaging feature can highly expedite a collaborative effort, in terms of communicating simultaneously with multiple users.

  Second feature of Facebook that I want to point out is the Groups feature. Anyone can create a group; that anyone could determine whether the group should be private or public; whether the group allows new members with or without the agreement of the group admin. The group administrators can create events for the group; he/she can schedule the event and the information is released to the members of the group as a pinned post. The screenshot shows the main page of the BC's Korean International Students Association. The Group feature in Facebook definitely allows the users to make collaborative efforts, in terms of working together as a class on a certain assignment.

  Facebook also allows its users to play games on Facebook. It acquired Zynga couple years ago to improve Facebook as a more viable and popular online gaming platform. The great advantages to Facebook games are that the users are free to connect and share the game that they are currently enjoying with their friends, connected through Facebook. Users can explore a great abundance of game through the search feature. Facebook has a great collection of simple games that have an universal appeal to a wide audience.

  Facebook has another feature that deals with the most recent trends and news. On the top rigt corner next to the chatting bar, there is a box named "trending." On this small box, the users are informed with the three most trending items that are being mentioned in Facebook. Facebook accumulates data from its many users' hashtags and status updates, and then eventually informs its users of the topics that bear the most publicity at the time.

  The last feature about Facebook is the "saved" feature. This feature has been added very recently, and I believe it is the most useful update that Facebook recently implemented. Users can save videos or specific posts that appear on their newsfeeds to watch it later. A lot of Facebook users could not locate the videos or posts that they have glimpsed previously, but not watched. Now with this new feature, Facebook is accommodating more of its users' needs.

This is an assignment from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Collaborative Computing. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc