Nature Blog Network

I was thinking about a subject for this week’s toolbox post, when I ran across this entry, Facebook for Birders, on A birding blog by Gunnar Engblom.

Deciding that this was a perfect post already written, I went to Facebook and added Gunnar as a friend, then messaged on Twitter (that’s another post) to ask if he’d allow us to reprint his effort here at the NBN. I offered to create the screenshots he was looking for to illustrate his post in trade.

But that’s enough about us. Without further ado, I give you Facebook for Birders.

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Introduction

About a week ago I wrote a message to BirdChat email list asking about social media that birders use other than Facebook and Twitter. I did not get an answer to this question, but I got another question instead.

“I’m new to facebook. How can I connect with birders in it?”

I prepared a reply to explain how Facebook can be beneficial to birders and sent it off to BirdChat. After thinking about it, I decided it also made a good topic for a blog post.

Facebook for birders

I know there are people out there who are wary of using Facebook or have a hard time seeing its usefulness.  I often hear, “Sounds like a complete waste of time to me!”

However, Facebook can be used in many ways. You can keep in touch with your closest friends. You can also identify other birders in your area or in an area where you are going to spend your holiday. There are several bird-related groups you can join or you can start a group yourself. Many groups are similar to BirdChat and allow you to share photos, videos, and links to favorite web pages.

Information on setting up an account

If you have not yet set up an account there is great information in these manuals available from Amazon.

Facebook - The Missing Manual

Facebook for Dummies

You can look inside the books on Amazon. In the first book (Facebook - The Missing Manual) the first pages open for view tell you how to open a Facebook account. In the second book (Facebook for Dummies), I searched for all pages containing the word “privacy”. That’s a way to find lot of good information that will help you get started.

For more information, check my blog post “how to use Amazon.com to read all types of books about social media” as well as a this post regarding Google Books, another online service that makes it possible to read parts of books online. For yet more information, see my collection of social media titles on Google Books.

What about privacy on Facebook?

Privacy issues often worry new Facebook users. Learning how to adjust your account settings will help you maintain the privacy level you prefer. If you are going to share information with a lot of birders whom you do not know outside of Facebook, then you may want to be cautious about what information you make publicly available. In my case, having a birding related business, it is in my interest to connect with as many birders as possible (birders talk with birders and if the word “birds in Peru” comes up…there is good chance my name will be mentioned), and therefore on my account you will find all types of contact info.

As a result - and I guess it is the result of my open privacy settings - the other day I got an email from an old girlfriend that I have not heard from in 30 years!! (I have not decided if I should reply). It shows you that there may be things you might want to leave in the past. On the other hand, I have connected with some friends I went to high school with, which I enjoy a lot.

Setting up an account is easy. Go to facebook.com and follow the instructions. Be sure to read the “terms of service” and “privacy policy”, since you’re agreeing to them by clicking to create your account.

To connect with other birders on Facebook.

First, use the Facebook feature that imports your email contacts. (This is optional.) You can select any of your accounts on Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, or other web-based services, or a file of addresses you upload from your computer.

You will have to give your email password in order for Facebook to import from your webmail account. If you feel uneasy about doing this, go to your email account and temporarily change your password, let Facebook upload your contacts, and then set the password back to the original or change to something different once again.

When you’re new, start with acquaintances that have a Facebook account. You can invite others who aren’t using Facebook, but they will have to go through the same process you just did. I’d suggest you get used to Facebook yourself, before you start sending invitations for others to join. When you do start sending invitations, click on each contact rather than “add all”, as it is likely the former would cause you to add the address of any of the email lists you belong to. You can imagine what it would look like on your local birding list if everyone was sending out such messages! Nobody likes spam.

Once you have identified a few people you know on Facebook, it automatically suggests other people you may know based on your “friends in common” and you can add those you know. You can also check the birding groups on Facebook, such as Facebook Nature Bloggers for others who have common interests.

To add a friend, click on their picture and then click on “add as friend”. Before you send off the friend request CLICK ON “Add a personal message…” and explain in a short note why you are inviting the person as a Facebook friend.

Chances are that he/she will accept your request if you just state that you want to get to know other birders.

Nature and Birding Groups in Facebook

Naturally, you can join as as many groups as you like. These groups tend not to be as active as the average email group, but are still nice to belong to. You can scroll through the members in any group and check if there is anyone you know or share many friends with, or anyone in your area you would like to become “Facebook friends” with.

What if you get Facebook invitations to become friends with people you don’t know?

I usually only accept invitations from those I know or who send a personal message. If there is no message, I check the profile of the person as it is available for 30 days (many times it is not very informative, as that is a way to protect your privacy -  only allowing friends to see much of the information in your profile). I will also search my birding email lists for the person, and if that does not work, I search for them on Google.

If I still can’t identify the person, I either erase the invitation or send the person a private message through Facebook to ask for more information (but note that the latter gives the recipient access to your profile for 30 days).

If you don’t want to be friends with someone, you can ignore and delete the message or block the person in settings. I prefer people who do not want to become Facebook friends with me use the blocking option, as it assures that they will not get a repetitive invitations. It is pretty harmless to ask someone to become your Facebook friend, but it can be annoying to get more than one invitation if you have already declined. The person asking does not get a message saying that you declined the invitation, and may not remember he or she has made an invitation previously.

Hopefully, no one will get mad at you for not accepting them as friends. The original purpose of Facebook was to connect with your real-life friends, but birders and others have now found a wider networking use for it. Denying someone access as a friend is like saying “I want to use Facebook only for my close friends and family” - a perfectly understandable decision.

Don’t put anything on Facebook you would not want to read in the newspaper

Even if you restrict access to your profile only to your friends, you want to be careful exactly what you put on Facebook. As a rule, don’t share anything that you would be embarrassed to have published on the front page of a major newspaper.

Applications on Facebook

There are a number of interesting applications on Facebook. There is even one for keeping your life list of birds called “Birds and Birdwatching”. This is a great little app, that will soon gain more and more followers.

There are also a lot of applications that are a complete waste of time. It’s fine to ignore them if you are not interested.

I still don’t understand why I should accept virtual flowers for my virtual garden in the “(Lil) Green Patch” application. Lots of my Facebook friends use this app, which supposedly saves rainforest. I have a hard time seeing how! Please explain, anyone!

[Wren Note: I admit to reading this and immediately sending Gunnar a flower for his Green Patch. Please restrain yourself from doing the same thing. If you want to play, you can send them to me.]

Update 1: Gwendolen Tee send me a link to an explaination by Beth Kanter regarding Lil Green Patch - a social gardening game. Through sponsors it generates some money and many worthy causes are being displayed while you play the game. The game donated $138,900 (US$) and recruited nearly 1,000 members to the Nature Conservancy. However, with over 500,000 players logging in daily and 6,800,000 users monthly worldwide, my participation is a drop in the bucket.  I have 48 “(Lil) Green Patch” request with plants sent to me. Do I have to play this? Can I donate my plants to someone who needs them?

[Wren Note: You can ignore applications, or deauthorize them later, if you don't want to play the game.]

Update 2: Bora Zivkovic of Blog around the Clock (Coturnix in the comment below) recommends perhaps the most useful of all features on Facebook. The Event Application, which you can use to invite friends to special birding events such as festivals, field trips, and lectures. This is a very useful feature for organizers of events to get in contact with attendees as well as get an idea of how many will attend, as there is a response button for the event invitation. Furthermore, for the participant in the event it provides a constant reminder as the upcoming events are featured on the right of the page. Bora has a lot of experience of Facebook and has used it for many different purposes. I think you will find his blog post - the evolution of Facebook - very helpful.

Update 3: This one I actually found myself.  If you are a member of Facebook, you should definitely use the Networked Blogs application. Just click on the link above for more information or to join if you already belong to Facebook. Then search for blogs containing birding and subscribe to your favorites. You can use Facebook as a blog feed reader and rate the blogs you subscribe to.  You can also use Networked Blogs to promote your own blog to new users.

[Wren Note: Don't forget to join the group "Facebook Nature Bloggers" whether you're new to Facebook or just hadn't found us yet.]

Since I joined Facebook about 9 months ago, it has brought lots of joy. I have better contact than ever with my grown-up daughter. I have connected with friends from the past that I had lost touch with. And most importantly I am direct contact with hundreds of birders around the world. Some are potential clients, others are not. That is not important. It is interesting to get to know each and everyone - and it is a cool way to connect and exchange bird photos and good birding stories.

See you on Facebook then???
Just search my name and you shall find me!

Gunnar Engblom
Lima, Peru
www.kolibriexpeditions.com