How to Join a Facebook Network

When you sign up for a Facebook account, you’re prompted to join a network. Facebook offers four types of networks: city, school, workplace, and regional. Joining a network expands your Facebook experience beyond only confirmed friends.

Networks are the building blocks of privacy on Facebook. The default privacy setting on Facebook is that only confirmed friends and people in your networks can see your full profile. Say Carolyn belongs to the Stanford University network, and Leah belongs to the Brown University network; they can’t see each other’s profile unless they become friends. If Leah transfers to Stanford, she can (by default) then see Carolyn’s profile without needing to be her friend.

You might have joined a network in the Facebook Welcome Wizard when you first joined Facebook. If not, or if you want to join another network, click Settings on the blue bar at the top of every Facebook page and then click the Networks tab under My Accounts.

The appearance of the resulting page depends on whether or not you’re in at least one network. If you are, you see a page with your current networks listed down the left side and a box on the right side for joining another network:

Joining a Facebook network is easy:

Start typing the name of the network you want to join, such as Stanford University, Los Angeles, or Procter & Gamble.

The field auto-completes while you type. There may be multiple listings for your network, so type in as much information as possible and select the one that most closely matches the network you want to join.
If you choose a city or region network, simply click Join Network to confirm that you want to join that network.

If you choose a school or workplace network, you need to enter your work or school e-mail address and then click Join Network.
If you’re joining a school or workplace network, check your e-mail.

Click the link in the confirmation e-mail that Facebook sent you to verify that you own the school or work e-mail address that you entered.

After you click that link, you officially join the school or workplace network.

If you wish to change or leave a network, simply return to the Networks page under Settings and click the Change Region or Leave Network link next to the network in the left column.