Growing Up: Using Facebook for business
I started using Facebook two years ago, right after I got out of college. I deliberately signed up after I was done with school, because I saw the others in the lab spending all their time on Facebook instead of doing their homework. When the site was just open to college students, I knew somehow it would have to “grow up” with its users to keep them engaged, but exactly how, I couldn’t predict.
Watching Facebook open up over the last year has been nothing short of amazing. Today, you hear the site being called the future “social operating system”. Facebook has the potential to encompass everything we do socially online–to the point where when I meet startup social network companies, I strongly suggest they write an application for Facebook Platform.
Shortly before I received a friend invite from him, Bryan Johnson, Founder/CEO of Braintree Financial mentioned that he heard from a contact that half of professionals are on Facebook. I’m not sure where his contact got that cite, or how accurate it is. It’s alarmingly high, but not that far-fetched, considering the site just signed it’s 30-millionth member earlier this month. I’ve also been reading post after post about professionals preferring Facebook to LinkedIn. Jeff Pulver summarizes the Facebook advantage nicely with this quote:
In LinkedIn, everything centers around establishing a connection. In Facebook, connecting is just the beginning. Facebook is all about community. And this can been seen by doing things like leaving messages on users’ walls, joining groups and having discussions, as well as some of the more social applications built for Facebook.
Thanks to the address book import feature, I’ve added many of my professional contacts to my Facebook friends list. I’ve also started adding people I meet at networking events like TechCocktail on the site. Even though I don’t know these people well (yet), because Facebook is “about the community,” or better, the ongoing interaction between users, it provides a superior tool for deepening the connection and relationship over time. This is really cool!
That said, there are a couple feature improvements Facebook (or platform developers) can make to make Facebook the optimal business networking site:
- Segmentation of your Limited Profile - Right now, you can only customize privacy settings on one single limited profile. I use this to limit access of certain people to my info–but I have it set up for personal privacy and this applies to a very small handful of my online “friends.” If I could segment my limited profiles, I could effectively “hide” some of my business activity from non-business friends I don’t want to put to sleep. I’d hate to wear out my welcome for them on Facebook by posting too many business blog posts, for example.
- iCal feed for upcoming events - I’m a Google Calendar user. I wish there was an iCal feed for every Facebook event I’m attending that would post the event in my Google Calendar (or iCal on my Mac, when I start using that). This is a simple, no brainer one.
What about you? Any pet features that would make Facebook a kick-butt business networking tool?