Facebook For Business: A Win Even If Its Not
Everyone is right - everyone is wrong - at least at the extremes of their arguments. It's an interesting duality - being right and wrong at the same time. Facebook was not originally designed for business (duh). But so far, I have not seen a deeply rich and serious business solution uniquely delivered on Facebook (also duh). There have been some intriguing mashups (one with Salesforce is discussed here). But we are so early in defining what social networking sites and social applications mean in a business context that the debate is not surprising. However, any rush to judgement concerning Facebook is premature and should be avoided.
Facebook will continue to evolve and refine its platform to support the needs of different audiences (the move to provide more flexible grouping of "friends" is one indicator of this trend). We will likely see different types of Facebook playgrounds at some point - although people dislike the term "walled gardens" - some fences (with the right gates in place) make for good neighbors and allow us to segment different social structures we have with other people based on the context of the relationship and to satisfy any policy requirement.
And yes, our collective experience with Facebook (even if the effort attempts to make the social networking site into something it was not originally intended to provide) will prove invaluable as we learn and apply that insight to create networking sites that are more specific, such as Designer Pages and others. So there is no overall downside here - the industry advances (in terms of understanding the business value of social networking sites, social apps, etc) whether Facebook succeeds in this regard or not.
The issue here is not whether online social networking has any high-value business applications — it clearly has, because business thrives on human connections and networks — it’s all about WHO you know.
No, the issue is that so many “adults” fell for Facebook’s ploy to convince them that they should adopt a toy built for college kids as a platform for their professional networking objectives. The deep irony is that Facebook’s core student users — for whom the application was and still is designed — are laughing at the grown-ups as they bumble around the playground, trying to hold meetings in the sandbox and forge new business relationships on the swings.
What Facebook has demonstrated is that professionals are eager to bring their business networking online — and by remaining a playground, Facebook has left open a golden opportunity for social networks tailored to specific professional communities to open their doors to all the “adult” Facebook users still trying to figure out whether they should “poke” their business contacts or doodle on their walls — an opportunity to create a conference hall rather than a playground.
Facebook’s Core College Student Users Laugh At Attempts To Use It For Business - Publishing 2.0
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Good day,
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Mike Zeuthen
503.608-7060
Posted by: Mike Zeuthen | October 07, 2007 at 07:16 PM