Facebook: The Whys and Hows
July 15, 2007
I'm on Facebook now. Two weeks ago I said no way. Why bother? Being on LinkedIn and Melcrum and Squiddo keep me busy enough. Truth is, I have a squidoo blog but I've never done anything with it. 
Linkedin is useful because it connects me to a whole lot of people I might never know, otherwise. Squidoo was for personal use - writing about The Good Old Days... which remain lost in the past. <sigh>
Melcrum is good because it's about communication and so am I.
Facebook? I don't know. I'm testing it out. I like it...but I'm not sure what it's going to be good for - other than staying in touch with good friends I seldom get a chance to see or talk to.
If you're using Facebook, I'd be interested in knowing why you use it. And, how you use it. And, if you prefer it over other social networking sites.
Thanks!
Overall, Facebook is my favorite social networking site. It has a lot of flexibility, makes it easy to connect with people, and it's an engaging application that allows members to show off more of their personality.
I've been using it for years to stay in contact with friends while I've been abroad, and it has worked really well for that. Of course, I'm a little leery of professionals making it their networking site of choice because I'm not interested in combining my personal and professional lives to that extent.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post about professionals joining Facebook called "Can young people fight back against the invasion of our beloved Facebook?"
http://www.getfreshminds.com/2007/06/a.html
So far, however, I haven't seen a problem with too much crossover between personal and professional lives. Most people are taking advantage of Facebook's connecting abilities in a fun and professional manner.
One word of caution: don't go overboard! There's nothing more irritating than a friend who joins everything, invites you to join in too, and spams you with polls/applications/photos/comments/messages/etc.
Whatever you do, don't be that person!
Posted by: Katie Konrath | July 17, 2007 at 11:24 AM
I like Linkedin but its just a static directory of resumes, no news or reason to use the site. They also try to charge you when you want to contact someone. You can contacts anyone for free on Congoo.com or facebook.com or myspace. facebook and Myspace are mostly kids though.
My 2 cents
Posted by: Heather rogers | July 15, 2007 at 12:36 PM