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O'Reilly sent me a copy of "Facebook: The Missing Manual (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517694/index.html) ", and I keep meaning to post a review of it online (http://chrisdevers.vox.com/library/post/mini-book-review-facebook-the-missing-manual.html) .

It's a strange book for O'Reilly, who's traditional bread & butter is dense, laden books on arcane little Unix subsystems & programming languages. Of course, that has changed for them with the success of the "Missing Manuals" series, and with their traditional markets largely in decline (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/state-of-the-computer-book-mar-12.html) , clearly they're looking to stake their territory in the new "web 2.0", "web apps not desktop apps" landscape.

But still, an entire book on Facebook?

I've always been a bit baffled by all the books on, say, using eBay. Obviously there's a market for this kind of thing, and I suppose that the best titles get beyond the basic mechanics of manipulating the site interface -- which is inevitably going to constantly evolve anyway -- and more on placing it within a context, putting the site to use as a tool for your life, etc. While I haven't actually read any of the many eBay books (http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=ebay+&sp-a=sp1000a5a9&sp-f=ISO-8859-1&sp-t=general&sp-x-1=cat&sp-q-1=&sp-x-2=cat2&sp-q-2=Books&sp-c=25&sp-p=Books&sp-k=Books&c=&p=Books&query=ebay+&submit.x=0&submit.y=0) , still I like to imagine that the best of them would be written this way.

Disappointingly, this isn't how "Facebook: The Missing Manual" was written. As the table of contents hints (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517694/toc.html) , the bulk of the book is a simple mechanical walkthrough of how to use the site: set up an account, log in, navigate the different types of pages, etc. There are two major problems with this approach:

1. If the site changes, the material quickly becomes outdated. In fact, Facebook already has changed since the book was published in January, and more radical changes are on the way (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/big-changes-coming-to-profile-pages-on-facebook/) . It's one thing to tie a book to a specific version of a traditional application -- a book on Apache 2 or Mac OS X Leopard or Perl 5.8 is pretty much going to directly apply to any instance of that version of the software. But web sites are contantly in flux, and the author doesn't get to assert "this book is for Facebook 2007" or "that book is for Wikipedia 2006". At best, the book can be written in an abstract, functional way, with lots of caveats that "this is all subject to change, but it worked as of the publication date." This book isn't really written that way.


2. Most people, from high school kids to grandparents, don't seem to be having a whole lot of trouble in just diving in & actively using Facebook. As it should be. Like most sites, it's designed to be easy & intuitive to use, and while that's an elusive target for any piece of software to attain, it's not unreasonable to assume that if you're savvy enough to manipulate a mouse, a web browser, and Google, then the additional work required to also figure out Facebook just by using it isn't going to be difficult for most people. Moreover, when the site evolves, you have to figure it out this way anyhow, so even if you get the introductory lessons from a printed guide, you're still going to have to eventually learn by doing, the way the people that skip the guide are doing.

There could have been a way out of this. The book could have tried to place Facebook within the broader landscape of social networking sites, which actually would have been a pretty interesting book to read.

Just like AOL before it, Facebook can perhaps best be thought of as a "training wheels" version of the social web, with a "jack of all trades, master of none", "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to things. Facebook has a photos widget, which is convenient, but not as nice as Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) . Facebook has status updates, but a lot of people prefer Twitter (http://twitter.com/) . Facebook has ways to post blog-like activity -- writing, posting links, etc -- but most people that want a blog use Blogger, Tumblr, Wordpress, Vox, etc.

The interesting things that set Facebook apart from these other sites are mainly (a) that it has all these things and more, and they more or less work, and (b) it has developed a critical mass of users that makes the site more interesting & useful than the tools themselves -- your mom may not be on Twitter, but she may well be on Facebook.

But it's not an either/or proposition -- there are no shortage of tools, both desktop and web apps, within & apart from Facebook itself, that allow FB to interoperate with these other sites & services, so that your Flickr photos show up on Facebook, your Facebook status updates show up on Twitter, etc. A book on this might have been more interesting, but maybe the title would have to change: "Facebook and the Social Web: The Missing Manual", or simply "Social Networking: The Missing Manual".

In any case, as a fairly tech-savvy guy, clearly I wasn't the target audience for this book. I let both my wife and my sister-in-law read it, as they're smart, but they aren't quite nerds like I am; they didn't see the point, either. "If you can't figure it out by using it, how would a book help you?" Indeed. I've considered giving the book to my mom, as she has made it clear that she doesn't quite understand her Facebook account, but I assume she wouldn't take the time to read a book on Facebook to begin with.

I'm sure there's an audience out there for the current edition of "Facebook: The Missing Manual", but it isn't among any of the people I know. They all either already have Facebook accounts, and so didn't need a book to get started, or they aren't interested in Facebook, and so wouldn't want to read a manual for it to begin with.