Archive for 'Social Networking'
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The other day I snapped a pic of a comedic moment with my roommates and uploaded it via Facebook Mobile with the caption “Our dryer ties knots better than a boy scout.” Here’s the photo (starring my roommate Nick):
Then a couple nights ago I called Steve Bliss, one of my two co-authors on Virtual LEGO and guardian of the LDraw Parts Library. I haven’t talked to Steve in a couple years. When his wife Kristin learned it was me on the phone, she yelled across the room “your dryer ties knots?”
What a great practical reminder of the power of the Facebook newsfeed.
“Lifecasting,” or broadcasting your activities via the web and social networks like Facebook are fundamentally changing the way we relate to each other. This is both exciting and scary (and possibly even creepy depending on who you accept friend requests from). These tools have given us the power to passively stay “involved” in others’ lives without us even realizing it. It’s only surreal moments like these that serve to remind us of what we are active participants.
And for the record, both Steve and Kristin have recently made the cut to my new “trusted” privacy group on Facebook, so I don’t care what they know about my dryer’s activities.
Having read many of the criticisms leveled at Sarah Lacy in the wake of her Mark Zuckerberg interview at SXSW (video), I offer this quick thought. In fact, it’s not even mine. Nor is it new, some dead famous guy said it.
“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Offering my own analysis of the interview itself (which I did watch, though I wasn’t there) would be beating a long-dead horse. The point here is, for the mistakes made, Lacy was the one in the arena. While there’s value in constructive suggestions and lessons learned for improvement, outright (and sometimes mean-spirited) criticism reveals character.
It’s easy to take pot-shots from the sidelines. In some circles, it’s even cool. It’s much harder to get in the arena and put your neck on the line. I’ve played both roles, as I’m sure many of you have. It’s my constant aim to criticize less and do more. Is it yours?
So, I’m a Facebook addict. As I’ve taken steps in the last couple months to increase my focus, I’ve spent less and less time there.
With the proliferation of applications in the recent months, (the majority of them at least mildly annoying with a healthy portion ranging from completely juvenile to all-out inappropriate), it’s become easier for the businessperson to tune out Facebook. I don’t blame them either, Facebook still hasn’t added a way to filter these annoying apps and the durn invites just keep coming, cluttering up the user experience.
Still, I believe the use of the site itself has value for building business relationships and staying in touch with people–in both personal and professional spheres–that can bring value to your career or business.
Here are four ways you can use Facebook to identify and develop new relationships:
- Use Groups to find people with similar interests. Search for groups, or look at a friend’s profile and see what groups they are in. If they’re a professional contact, there’s likely at least one group on their list with members who you would have a professional interest in.
- Research contacts and potential contacts on Facebook. It’s a great way to get to know some basic biographical info about someone you’re looking to reach out to or do business with if they happen to have a profile.
- Polish up your profile. With the above, realize that people will be looking for info on you there as well. If you aren’t comfortable with random people peeking, lock your privacy settings down. If you are, make sure you present only the details about yourself you want public. And don’t forget the Limited Profile feature, where you can limit what information certain “friends” are able to see (you can find that at the bottom of the Privacy page). Just like the age-old adage about email–if you don’t want something to appear on the cover of the New York Times, don’t write it.
- Create a fan page for your company or product. Facebook’s new Fan feature has been met with mixed reviews. Setting this up is easy, though I haven’t published one yet. If you have, please comment on your success and/or lessons learned.
There’s no magic bullet or one technique for using Facebook for business. In fact, often times you might struggle to tie your FB activities directly to sales or growth — it’s in that soft area of relationship building that isn’t always measurable. Introductions made and relationships built there can grow in value with time, just as within any other networking context.
What are your strategies for using Facebook for business?
This Sunday I was out to lunch with four friends. All but one were on Facebook, and of us four “Facebookies,” three of us had added the My Aquarium application and were actively sending fish to each other along with funny notes. So, what did we do? We talked about the last couple days’ activity. I felt awkward though that one person was left out, so I said to my friend “Mary,” “you really should get on Facebook.”
She replied that she just didn’t get into “those things,” (by that she meant social networks like Facebook and MySpace). While I can see why someone wouldn’t get into MySpace (heh heh), Facebook has really helped me stay connected to (and reconnect with) people I would have lost track of over the years. It’s really enhanced my social life, and it’s easy to use to boot.
So why isn’t Mary (and others who share her disinterest) on Facebook? I’ve boiled down peoples responses to two categories:
- People who don’t get into social networking for one reason or another (I think my friend fits this category)
- People who are intimidated by computers and/or the Internet
So, why do I care? Does it really matter? (Short answer: to me it does)
I want an easier way to coordinate social activities with my primary social group, the twenty-somethings at my church. The primary way we let everyone know what’s going on is via email to our group. Since my church is low-tech as a whole (they grasp email), people are always getting left off of group activity email blasts. We’re a fairly active and tight-knit bunch, so when people get left out multiple times in a row, it becomes an issue and feelings get hurt, even though there was no ill intent.
I’d say 80% of us are Facebook friends with each other. It would be very easy to create a Facebook group called “Young Adult Lifegroup” and broadcast events there. If you want the updates, join the Facebook group (and here’s instructions how and an invite). This prevents people being left out on the email CC and gives one central, easy to use location for group “stuff.”
I floated the idea a month ago and it was shot down. I’ll probably float it again soon. It looks like I’m an early adopter getting frustrated waiting for the late adopters :-)
For people who just aren’t into social networks, it would be great if Facebook had a feature that let you subscribe to a group via email; news items, events, photo gallery notifications, etc. This feature would go beyond the “invite people not on Facebook via email” feature when creating events, instead someone could sign up for email updates from a group if they received an invitation code. That would be cool, and it would let the 80% use a centralized site to manage their events and meta-discussion with the group.
The idea of social networking among real-life contacts is a very attractive proposition. It documents and makes it easy to communicate a shared culture, and it provides a one-stop place to get the word out about activities and events. But, some people haven’t taken the plunge yet and aren’t on Facebook (by far the most useable and attractive social network right now). Pretty soon, I see a new form of “digital divide,” those who are connected to their in-person friends via social networks, and those who are not. Call it the “social network divide” or “social OS divide.”
The questions I’m left with in the case of my friends are:
- What is keeping the stragglers from signing on board?
- If they’re intimidated, what can be done to make them feel more confident?
- If they’re just not into it, where’s the motivation to get them into it?
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?
