Facebook Glossary

Admin
An admin (or administrator) is a person who’s in charge of a group. When you create a group, you are automatically listed as both an admin and the group’s creator. Admins can invite people to join the group, appoint other admins, and edit group information and content. They can also remove members and other admins.

Applications
Users can add applications to their profiles, pages, and groups based on interest or functionality. There are dozens upon dozens of applications to choose from. Some are built by Facebook. Most are built by external developers.

Cause
An advocacy group or online campaign for collective action. Any Facebook user can start one. A cause can be used to raise money or promote one’s position on an issue.

Community Pages
The pages that link from fields you fill out in your profile — are for general topics and all kinds of unofficial but interesting things. You “like” these pages to connect with them, but they aren’t run by a single author, and they don’t generate News Feed stories.

Event
A calendar-based resource that users can add to their profiles, pages and groups that lets them create and share news about upcoming affairs or social gatherings.

Facebook Ads
Advertisements on Facebook. Users can create FacebookAds to market their products and ideas. Ads are not free. Ad spending is in the form of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Cost-Per-Thousand-Impressions (CPM).

Facebook Connect
A single sign-on service that enables Facebook users to login to affiliated sites using their Facebook account and share information from those sites with their Facebook friends.

Fan
A person who has joined a page because they “like” what that page represents.

FBML
Facebook Markup Language is a variation and subset of HTML with some elements removed. It allows Facebook application developers to customize the “look and feel” of their applications. It lets developers build social applications on the Facebook platform. Facebook Developers Wiki is an excellent resource for information about FBML. There are several applications offered that have FBML editing capability.

Friend
Another user who has connected to another user’s profile, usually by invitation.

Friend Finder
A Facebook utility that helps users find present and former friends, family, coworkers, schoolmates, and other acquaintances.

Gifts (by Facebook)
Virtual tokens of appreciation one member gives to another. Users can select gift recipients, gift images and delivery options.

Group
A group is not a page or profile. It is created by bands, companies and other organizations to promote their activities. Visit the Help Center to learn more.

Insights
Facebook’s answer to web page analysis. For each Facebook page, Insights tracks the number of page views, unique views, total interactions, wall posts, discussion topics, fans, new fans, removed fans, reviews, photo views, audio plays, and video plays.

Like
A feature that appears as a link next to something you see on Facebook that allows users to let others know they appreciate the post, video, comment, etc.

Limited Profile
A profile that allows only restricted access.

Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace is a feature developed by Facebook that allows users to post free classified ads within the following categories: For Sale, Housing, Jobs, and Other. Ads can be posted as either available and offered, or wanted.

Member
A person who has joined and participates within a group.

Network
A circle of friends and acquaintances that centers on a city, school, company, or military organization.News

Feed
A streaming/real-time feed that highlights what’s happening in your social circles on Facebook. News Feeds are posted to profiles for all to see.

Notes
Notes are like mini-blogs for your profile.

Notifications
Notifications are news feeds from friends, sent automatically as they engage in activity on their profile.

Page
A page is not a profile. It may look like one, but it’s not. The features and capabilities are different. It is intended for and created by artists, musical groups, celebrities, businesses, brands and similar entities (not individuals). You can add pages to your profile to show your friends what you care about. Only the official representative of an artist or business can create and make changes to a page.

Poke
A poke is a way to interact with your friends on Facebook. It allows one user to virtually poke another. Some consider it flirting.

Profile
A profile is not a page. It may look like one, but it’s not. The features and capabilities are different. It is intended for and created by people who want to share information about themselves and socialize with others. A profile displays a user’s personal information and their interactions with friends. Each registered user may have only one profile.

RSS
Really Simple Syndication. Wikipedia defines it as a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

Static FBML
A Facebook application that lets users customize their pages using Facebook Markup Language (FBML). See the Static FBML page for more information.

Status
A micro-blogging feature which allows users to inform their friends of their current whereabouts, actions, or thoughts.

Stream
The stream shows your posts from your friends in real-time. This keeps you up-to-date on everything that’s happening. You can control who appears here.

Tabs
Tabs mark the different sections of a profile or page. Tabs include: Info, Wall, Photos, Boxes and many others including custom tabs.

Tag
Marking a photo or video with text that identifies the person in the image or video. Use the @ sign on a wall post to tag friends and make the post show on a friend’s wall.

Updates
News feeds sent to you from pages that you have joined.

Wall
A featured section inside a Facebook profile. It’s a space on every user’s profile page that allows friends and users to interact.

Warnings
Notices from Facebook that you have engaged in a prohibited activity or that you have reached a limit that suggests you were using a feature at a rate that is likely to be considered abusive