Magazines and social media courses constantly roll out advice on what makes a good Facebook update. Updates should be designed like advertisements, and ought to include images that feature smiling people. If you don’t have a colorful ad image of your own, you should pick one up on the internet, or at least link to a suitable video. The least successful updates, according to the gurus, are text only: marketing surveys suggest their attention value is several hundred times smaller than that of updates with images. But hey, those text-only updates meet my needs better than smiling faces and cat pictures. I think that apt observations, compact summaries, well-chosen facts and invitations to discuss also can succeed on Facebook. Your goals determine how to use the medium. While Facebook offers more varied entertainment than Twitter, that’s not to say the entertainment is only for advertisements. Facebook’s pages and groups lend themselves effectively to education and to group participation, as long as the communication aligns with the objectives – and as long as you ignore nonsensical advice.