Using Facebook on Your iPhone
- Understanding and Downloading Facebook's iPhone App
- Viewing Your News Feed
- Posting Status Updates
- Viewing Friends' Profiles and Photos
- Viewing Your Facebook Inbox
- Chatting on Your iPhone
- Checking Into Facebook Places
More than 250 million people access Facebook through some sort of mobile device; that's a third of all Facebook users. And these mobile users are twice as active on the Facebook site as non-mobile users.
By far the most popular mobile device today is Apple's iPhone. It's not surprising, then, that Facebook offers a robust iPhone app for its users; it's a great way to connect to the site and interact with your Facebook friends.
Understanding and Downloading Facebook's iPhone App
While iPhone users can access Facebook's mobile website (m.facebook.com) from the Safari web browser, a much better experience is had by using Facebook's dedicated iPhone app. The Facebook app redesigns the social networking site for the smaller iPhone screen and makes it easy to access the site's most popular features.
You can download the Facebook iPhone app (for free) from the iPhone App Store. More information is also available on the app's Facebook page, located at http://www.facebook.com/iPhone/.
When you launch the app, you're taken immediately to the News Feed screen. You can access other site features by tapping the Menu button, which looks like a grouping of nine dots or boxes. This displays the application screen, with one-touch access to the News Feed, Profile, Friends, Inbox, Places, Groups, Chat, Events, Photos, and (if you swipe right to the next screen) Notes.
Figure 1 Tap the Menu button (left) to access all Facebook features.
Figure 2 Facebook's application screen
At the top of the application screen is an Account button; tap this button to log out of your Facebook account, access your account and privacy settings, and browse Facebook's Help Center.
At the bottom of the application screen is the Notifications area. Tap in this area to display the Notifications screen, where you'll see the most recent notifications received from Facebook.