15.1. How Facebook Mobile Works

Facebook Mobile is an application (see Chapter 13) that lets you use your Internet-ready cellphone to:

• Interact with Facebook on your phone’s teeny-tiny screen. Facebook’s Mobile Web feature (Section 15.3) lets you use the browser on your cellphone to see a scaled-down version of the Facebook website. Using your phone’s keypad, you can do things like update your status, find out what your friends are doing, look up people’s phone numbers, and keep tabs on the Events you’ve signed up for.

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  Tip:

  If you own a BlackBerry, an iPhone, or another popular “smartphone,” there’s likely a specially designed Facebook application you can use to access Facebook directly from your phone (rather than a scaled-down version of the site). To see if there’s a special application for your phone, point your phone’s web browser to www.facebook.com/mobile and scroll down to the “Facebook for your phone” section.

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• Interact with Facebook via text messages. The Mobile Texts feature (Section 15.3.2) lets you interact with Facebook from your phone without having to go through the mobile version of the Facebook website. (This option is usually faster than the Mobile Web feature, and is the way to go if your phone doesn’t have a web browser; you do, of course, need a phone that lets you send text messages.) If you want to write a quickie message on a friend’s Wall, for example, you can text-message a specific Facebook code (see Section 15.3.2) along with your friend’s name and your message. You can also sign up to receive texts when you get a friend request or when your friends change their status, post on your Wall, or send you a Facebook Message.

• Upload photos and video clips. Perfect for posting impromptu additions to Groups and Events (as well as for tracking project updates), Facebook’s Mobile Uploads feature (Section 15.3.3) lets you sling the media clips you capture with your phone directly to your Facebook account.

• Subscribe to your friends’ status updates. You can choose to receive a text message every time one of your Facebook friends updates his Facebook status—useful for keeping your finger on the pulse of close friendships (or team members) when you’re away from your computer.