Social School: Keeping up with the ever

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) -Today, Facebook has more than 1 billion users, all connected to each other over the internet.

But every day this site is changing, and it's easy to get left behind.

Facebook has existed since 2004, and since then has seen many makeovers. It can be a very useful tool both personally and professionally, but you need to keep up with the changes to get the most out of it.

The days of hand written notes and letters are gone. Now this is how we communicate, connected through a single website: Facebook.

'It's great for us to be able to keep in touch and establish a rapport with our customer.'

Dale Wallace is the owner of a local floral shop in Riverdale, and says Facebook is a necessary for marketing his business.

'A lot of people don't know what they want until they see it.'

Businesses that are as visual as this one really utilize Facebook to get customers through their front door because they're able to show customers exactly what they can do with their products.

'A lot of people buy with emotion so this way they are able to see some unique things that we are able to provide,' said Wallace.

Businesses are using Facebook because that's where their customers are. It adapts to their user's needs everyday, and most of these daily changes are happening on your news feed.

'Facebook is trying to optimize their newsfeed to make you interact with it more, to make you more addicted to it.'

Lannie Byrd works at Social innovation. He says since Facebook is always changing, you need to keep up with it to maximize your experience.

'Accepting change and even figuring out the best way to take advantage of the change is the big focus you need to have,' said Byrd.

One of those changes is lists. Creating a list helps you weed through all this information on your Facebook news feed. It lets you decide who you want to follow or share information with, increasing your privacy.

'Facebook is real life. You shouldn't do anything or post anything on Facebook that you wouldn't stand in front of an auditorium or street corner and do,' said Byrd.

To view your privacy settings you can click the 'view as' tab on your profile to see how other people see you, but one thing privacy settings can prevent are advertisements.

'That's really the compromise I'm giving Facebook. I'm using it for free, so it's gonna put ads in front of me from businesses and things like that,' said Byrd.

But taking advantage of Facebook's outreach may give you a better experience online, both socially and professionally.

This is all part of Social School here at THV11. On Wednesday, learn about the must-have free apps for taking pictures with your smartphone.

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