Ok so I don’t think Facebook is going to need a big intro here and more than likely everyone reading this blog already has a Facebook account. However, seeing this is a starter kit I will highly suggest making a Facebook profile if you don’t have one. Its quick easy customizable and FREE. The best part is there aren’t as many creepsters compared to other social networks…i.e the booty call of the 21st century, Myspace.

Ok with that being said all you need is an email address, Gmail is google’s email client and its great (free of course)! That would be my suggestion if you don’t have email. If you do just go to www.facebook.com and start reaping the benefits of the internet age and Mr. Zuckerberg (the creator).

So from here on out I am going to assume you have your Facebook account setup.

The Facebook App is fantastic extension of the web interface. It has beautiful home screen that is totally customizable. Just like you move icons on the iPhone (hold until they shake) when finished and everything is in place just press the Done button in the upper left hand corner.

Default Home Screen

This is fantastic if you follow people, businesses, whatever you can easily add any shortcut by clicking the + sign in the upper left hand corner and up pops a search bar and under that your friends list with pictures! Below is a Screenshot I added my sister to my first screen on my home screen; to navigate between screens all you do is swipe left or right and the screen indicator is located right above the notifications tab.

Custom Home Screen

As you can see the icons are tilted this is because I took a screen shot while I was moving my icons to show you (I am such a nice guy)!

Now lets really see what this app can do! There are 9 default portals: News Feed, Profile, Friends, Inbox, Chat, Requests, Events, Notes and Photos.

The News Feed is very similar to the feed on facebook.com. Whats great about this app is you can instantly update your status by entering text in the Whats on your mind? area at the top of your screen. You can also add pictures or videos easily by pressing the camera icon! Another great feature is you can comment on peoples updates with a like or a comment! Very convenient when you are having a facebook war and are not in front of your computer, trust me it will happen to you eventually!

Next you have a really nice filter that you can apply to the news feed to only retrieve data that is relevant to you. The choices are : Live Feed, all, Your main network (mine is Indiana since IU was my setup account), Status updates, Photos, Links, Pages, Video, Notes, Groups, Foursquare, Daily Horoscope, Gifts.

This is really nice when you start or people start befriending you, you literally will be friends with “everyone and their mother” if you aren’t careful and have a very liberal add policy because you will have a lot of status updates or a lot of “noise” that you could really care less about!

The Requests portal is just that if someone has befriended you this is where that request will go and you can either approve or reject!

*Good rule of thumb if you want to keep your friends list to people semi relevant to your life, don’t accept friendships from people you have never met, albeit you might have been hammered at a bar but at least you met them

The Friends portal is also pretty straight forward it populates your friends list. However, you being the savvy reader you know I wouldn’t just mention something to mention something and waste your time like I did by writing this sentence (sorry). There is a nifty little Sync button in the corner that will take your address book and sync all the names that are in your address book and add their facebook picture to the address book contact…i.e. when they call you will see their facebook pic pop up on your iPhone! This is super convenient especially if you have an organized address book. The best part, you have the option to turn Replace photos on which means when your Friends change their fb pic it will replace the old picture with the new one!! Lastly, once synced you will see in your friends list a blue telephone icon indicating that this friend has been synced to a contact in your address book.

*I was king of the nickname add. I would never remember people so I would put them in my iPhone as Hot Blonde or something. With this feature it gives you incentive to get the First and Last name of people and keep a clean organized contact list.

On to the Profile portal its obviously the profile home page for the person logged in (most likely you unless you let some use your iPhone). You can see your wall from here and comment or like on posts just like you would on the web version of FB. Whats nice is you can switch from Portrait to Landscape (this functionality is available almost everywhere in the app except for the home screen)! There is an info tab at the bottom that has the corresponding info from your profile such as age phone number stuff like and is not editable from the app (at least I haven’t found a way, have you?). Lastly, there is the Photos tab which is almost the same as clicking on the Photos portal (what a segway)!

Profile Portal

As stated above you can access your Photos one of two ways: the Photos portal or thru the Profile portal and then the photos tab at the bottom. There is a lot of functionality in the app once you get to your photos. You can upload, comment, delete, make profile picture with any photo! The app even asks you to set your thumbnail (the part of the picture it shows as the really small icon…i.e. like next to posts you make) after you set a new profile picture. Its really pleasant to browse photos on the iPhone because you can do portrait or landscape and it displays photos just like the galleries in the default app, Photos.

Selected Photo Screen- Pressed Square with arrow in bottom left corner

One big difference between the Photos portal and the photos tab in the profile portal is the ability to create an album . This is a really nice feature, especially if you like uploading your pictures from your iPhone and not your computer, but you want to have different albums instead of that generic mobile uploads folder!

The next portal I will talk about is the notes portal. Its pretty self explanatory you can add new notes, publish notes and read your published notes from here. Not too much else to say about this except, take note (come on thats funny)!

The Events portal is a little more invigorating and you should never miss a kegger, charity event, or birthday ! This portal aggregates (puts in once spot, i read dictionary for fun) all your upcoming events, which is great and its one touch away from the details and you can even RSVP to events from here! Well done Facebook! The culmination of the Events portal is that there is a birthdays tab where it shows everyone of your friends upcoming birthdays and even shows their age if they input their birthyear!! The events portal is where the party is at, no pun intended, maybe a little!

One of my Events in detail from the Events Portal

*one major task many FB’ers have been wanting from this app is the ability to create an event, that functionality does not currently exist in the app but I am guessing will be available in an update in the near future!

Ok now its time to chat about the Chat portal. This is obviously your access to instantly chat through the infamous FB Chat. There is an offline feature if you don’t want people pestering you while your iPhone because when the FB app is open it appears to people on a computer or iPhone or any device capable of accessing FB chat that you are online even though the your are not in the chat portal. The icons used in the chat portal appear next to your friends online with a moon indicating idle and a green dot indicating available.

The last portal to introduce is the Inbox portal another very intuitive portal, where you can read your new and old messages, browse sent messages and check out the recent updates of the businesses and pages you are a fan of. You can also easily create new messages from here by pressing the universal pencil and paper icon in the top right corner.

The FB App is a must have and the time where you could blow off Facebook.com as a internet trend “only for kids or students” has passed. Facebook.com is here to stay Get on it Share Connect and have some fun!

One last thing if I still haven’t convinced you to join Fb, an integrated API (tech talk) that you might have heard of or seen on other websites is called Facebook Connect (which if you haven’t read my other posts is taking over the world).

What FB Connect does is it allows you to use your FB credentials to log into the website you are visiting or commenting on, which is timely because you can type in your FB credentials instead of having to create a whole different profile and create a new username and password specifically for that website! Its like your internet passport so to speak.