Facebook Rocks

Facebook,at its most basic level, is what it sounds like. In the olden days before the Internet, when I was just a wee girl, a facebook was a book with photographs in it, meant to help people on campus get to know each other, from alumni and staff to students and teaching faculty. If you know someone on Facebook, that’s reason enough to join.

Yes, like AOL was, it is a “walled garden”, meaning it’s a closed network where the general public can’t see what you’re up to – you have to be a member to get beyond faces, or to interact with the faces you see.

Sometimes, privacy is a good thing, yes?

People present a different side to themselves when the doors are closed, when they can control who is observing what they do.

And this is what is wonderful about Facebook. You get to know people on a more personal level than you would with email. You can learn what their interest are, and see how they interact. I’ll get into more details about the tools in Facebook that actually make this possible later on.

Right now, here’s a quick list of what makes Facebook the place to be right now.


1.You can be yourself more, and still be professional.

There are ways to say things on Facebook that aren’t exactly risqué, but that you wouldn’t put on your blog, either, due to audience conflicts or content compatibility issues.

2.It’s easier and faster to get to know people you admire.

There are many people whose content I enjoy, that I’d like to get to know better, in a deeper way than commenting on their blog would allow, but is not as intrusive as random emailing or calling them on the phone out of the blue.

Facebook allows me to find and talk to those people, and soak up a whole different batch of their wisdom than the public at large gets to see.

So if you find out that someone you admire is on Facebook and they aren’t yet overwhelmed with noise, get on and Friend them before their list goes over 100 – that seems to be the point at which the noise has the potential to overwhelm the signal.


3. It helps you establish common ground to facilitate deeper bonds when networking.
You have a lot more leverage to introduce yourself to someone if you participated in several of the same discussions and are interested in the same things. With a blog you have a fleeting connect until someone comments repeatedly.

I mean, honestly, how many blogs do you visit every single day, of the ones that are in your reader?

Facebook has a system that reminds me to care for and feed my relationships with people in a way that a blog doesn’t. When you bump into someone enough within this remnder system, you’ll want a way to connect to each other more often.

4. It’s intimate.

This point can’t be overstated. Facebook feels like a bunch of small gatherings, even when there’s a conversation in a big group taking place among hundreds of people.

This makes people feel comfortable, when they’re comfortable they relax, when they relax, they’re more open. Meeting colleagues, potential clients and your favorite gurus is a completely different experience than when you meet them in a more public part of the Net – for better or for worse, you’ll often get the most accurate version of a person you can online.

5. You can display your expertise instead of just talking about it.

It’s one thing to get compliments by peers, or to be published in a prestigous online publication because of somethng you wrote – in fact, it’s a great thing. A wonderful enhancement to that is when a potential client sees you edified by one of your peers. It’s extremely powerful, because it happens in real time

6.  It feels like a fun waste of time but it can actually double as highly productive time spent on your online business.

I know I don’t have to explain to you why feeling like you’re goofing off, when you’re growing your business, is a good thing.

7.You’ll find all kinds of long lost friends.

There are people I haven’t heard from, literally since college, that I found again through Facebook. It made my eyes mist up to see some of them around again, and doing well. That’s the best present I could ever get from being online and it was totally free.

Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team!