You’re on Facebook. So is the guy sitting next to you on the bus. Your brothers, best mates, old classmates, demented neighbors, former coworkers, your grandma – they’re all on Facebook. The social networking behemoth now boasts over 500 million (active) members (that’s  1 in every 13 people on earth) and everything from your Mountain Dew Code Red to your sneakers has a fan page (and some sneakers are themselves modeled after your social networking site of choice). But, far beyond being just a marketing tool, or a meme-factory, or a way for fourteen year olds to engage in endless flame wars over CoD scores, Facebook is becoming an integral (and at times, claustrophobic) part of how we access the Internet.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the fact of FACEBOOK – the social networking mega-site now holds 71.2% of the U.S. internet audience as users. But in an age where 57% of people talk more online than they do in real, actual life is that a real surprise? After all, nothing is official anymore until it’s Facebook official.

Facebook now has a life of its own – these days you can book a flight on Facebook, then use Facebook during the flight, and pretty soon you’ll be able to check updates in your car. It’s gotten people fired, arrested, expelled, busted, sued/possibly killed, been parodied , helped diagnose leukemia, helped identify suicidal behavoir, and helped start revolutions. It’s now much more than a way to communicate with friends – these days, Facebook is the window through which we see the internet. Which also means Facebook is how we get our information  - 48% of young Americans said they find out about news through Facebook and indeed, the site often picks up local, on-the-ground information faster than a news site possibly can. While we were in Las Vegas for CES this past January, San Francisco experienced a small earthquake – which I found out from reading some friends status updates. More than two hours later, the local news website had information about the event. 

So, how to best handle this beast? Let us guide you through the ins-and outs of security and privacy settings, photo uploading and sharing, scripts, essential apps and add-ons so that you can manage your Facebook experience in a way that works for you. Or at least as close to it as Zuckerberg will let you. We've got a slew of tips and tricks - including tips from Maximum PC's own Facebook Fans! - on how to try to tame the Facebook monster.

One quick, important note: because FB helpfully updates and changes its layout and policies every bloody three and a half minutes, we can’t guarantee that these tips and tricks will work forever. But they were all kosher as of last weekend.

Right, right, but can we just skip to the good stuff?

Entry Level Tips and Navigation

So, you’ve got a profile, you’ve shared some links, maybe some photos but you still don’t know how to change your profile to Pirate or fix your privacy settings? Start here to make sure your bases are covered with tips on privacy, your profile, statuses, and a few apps. Most of these are lightweight ways to add functionality (or fun) to your page, or play with your status – but the security tips at the end are heavyweight recommendations for all Facebook users. Facebook’s privacy policy actually has over 1,300 more pages than the U.S. Constitution, so it’s no surprise that a lot of users are unaware of exactly how much they’re sharing. For starters, you’ll want to become very familiar with two menus: the Account Settings and the Privacy Settings (pictured below for quick reference). We’ll be discussing these a lot, so here’s a run down of what everything leads to:

Your Account Settings Menu

The Account Settings Menu leads you to basic information about yourself - name, email, address - as well as additional tabs, the most important of which are Facebook Ads (where you can turn off advertisments that appear on your page) and notifications where you can set what Facebook activities you'd like to be notified of. Clicking on Privacy in the Settings tab (or from the drop-down menu below Account in the upper-right hand navigation) leads to the Privacy Settings Menu:

Privacy Settings Menu

You'll likely be spending a lot of time here - mostly navigating between the View Settings, Customize Settings and Edit Your Settings links, all of which lead to different options. Check out the screenshots below:

Privacy Settings > View Settings

Clicking on the View Settings link under Privacy Settings leads you to this menu, where you can adjust who can view basic information and acivity on your Facebook page. The safest setting is to share information with Friends Only or to choose Customize to edit what each friend or list can see.

Privacy Settings>Customize Settings

Clicking Customize Settings under Privacy Settings, gets you to another menu which allows you to edit who can view what. Again, Friends Only is usually the way to go, unless you want to customize further. Sharing with everyone really does mean everyone.

Privacy Settings> Apps and Websites (Edit Your Settings)

Choosing Edit Your Settings under the Apps and Websites section in Privacy leads you to the menu above - it's a biggie, since this is where you can control all your apps. Those pesky suckers really like to run rampant on your Facebook page, too. For now, just know that this is the place to lock 'em down.