"friends" have access to your home page where you are making personal comments about life in general. Your friends must be invited by you in order to see your page - you would have personal photos etc in this area. If you want to have a business type home page you can have fans - these folks don't need to be personally invited to your home page. This is a public page and therefore you would treat it as such.

If you have such a "marketing" page how do people, complete strangers, get to see it?

On "personal" pages - you say people have to be invited to view them, to become "friends". What if a complete stranger gets hold of (or just guesses) the correct URL? Can they see it then?

I'm still struggling to see how it works, and indeed the point of it.

barb, i friend-ed you yesterday, and sent friend suggestions to some of MY friends to friend you, which were the requests you got. i was then notified each time someone i suggested became your friend.

if you wanted a fan site, your son set it up a just a lil bit wrong. show him this link, and create a "page" rather than a "profile"

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/advertising/?pages

add info, photos & links. here's ours (not great, but serviceable):

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=hom...ewas=1659489552

there is a page on facebook called god bless the reef...dedicated to ambergris caye ..... and the reef of course....

Thanks Jane. I'll get my "I.T." department on it right away!;-) Yes, I got your friend request and OK'd it. Lots of you other "friends" too! Thanks.

Thats really good and valuable information Amanda.
this is a very informative thread.
this is my profile or 'friends page' and I'm not sure it can be seen if your not on an invited list ,....maby so.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=703484524&ref=profile
Below is my business page and postings are sent to Fans.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/White-Sands-Dive-Shop/94350248602?ref=s

Both of those URLs just took me to my own Facebook page. Looking at what they say, that's hardly surprising. But MY page, not yours.

oops clumsy me. i edited it ...try now

I see those both in their complete splendour. Should access to one of them have been restricted?

I'm afraid I still don't really see how Facebook works. Not how to set up your own page, because I did that for myself at a very basic level and I think I can see how to develop it if I ever feel sufficiently bothered. Just like setting up any other "blog", not that I've ever done it. But my problem is how those pages once created are used. I've tried to find Facebook pages for people I was pretty sure had them but in every case failed. For example, I would before now have looked at Jan's page had I even knew that it existed and known how to find it. My own page seems to be fixed on input from one particular person, and I don't see how to expand it to include others. And I don't see how to get an overview of lots of Facebook pages in one place at one time, which surely would be the most useful view.

But before I bother with "how", "where" and "when", I'm looking for an answer to "why".