Scott--I've been arguing against Facebook for business networking since I heard everyone go ballistic on the concept at Supernova...but for different reasons than the ones you suggest--
My reasons: because if you're using it to find potential employees, you may be opening yourself up to a discrimination suit. Remember, in the U.S. we're not allowed to ask marital status, religion, nor even ask them to send a pic with a resume, lest it prejudice us against them on race or gender.
Even if we don't know now if our employers are googl'ing us, you can bet there will be a way to find out in the future. So, if someone feels they were discriminated against because of something on their Facebook profile, there's some labor lawsuit potential...
That's probably why the Miss NJ/Miss America contestant wasn't fired because of the pics from her Facebook profile...avoiding a lawsuit.
Personally, I don't mind sharing info with the folks who've I've "friended" on Facebook, even if many of them are casual friends I've met at conferences. These are people I clicked with and would probably have a drink with. That may at some point lead to a job, perhaps, depending on the circumstances. And that would be great. That's "networking." And it's a lot less tacky than someone signing you up for his/her newsletter without even an "it was great meeting you" email.
Hashim
· 2 years ago
"Why can’t I have ONE profile and use it on Facebook for personal networking and have a DIFFERENT app that I use for with the SAME profile for professional networking and collaboration."
I use Facebook's privacy functions to show one profile to friends, and a limited one to my business contacts. My business contacts can see my contact info, and find out where I work, etc, but not what sex I'm interested, my poetry, etc.
Mike Veytsel
· 2 years ago
Hi Scott,
The solution here seems relatively straight forward.
Allow the user to assign connections with different classifications (ie: Business, Family, Acquaintance, etc., not just Friends). Then allow users to customize access levels to their profile, based on user classification. Finally, update the platform API to allow applications to have knowledge of classifications.
The core that currently exists is historic to how Facebook evolved, but as the user base and utility changes, I'm sure Facebook will adapt.
I don't think fragmenting your social graph into networks unaware of each other (ie: Flickr, Delicious, Google Reader) is the most efficient long term solution, and certainly one that's not meaningful to a large mass of users.
Facebook is meant to unify your fragmented networks into one location. I'll agree that the implementation allowing that to happen isn't yet perfect, but they're moving in the right direction.
Scott Karp
· 2 years ago
@Mike
That's like saying you use AOL to connect to the internet, therefore you should use their browser, their email, their IM.
Fortunately, the Web as platform has finally made "best of breed" a reality.
Even if Facebook develops applications for business, I should be forced to use them just because I used their personal social apps.
AND...this still assumes that all business uses are monolithic -- what about segmenting different business social apps for different professions?
If I OWN my social data, then I can make all of my social apps aware of each other.
Mike Veytsel
· 2 years ago
@Scott
The value and power of Facebook is because of the centralization and peer-verification of identities, which allows it to create a realistic representation of the social graph.
With the platform, Facebook relinquished control of how apps segment users for varying topics and utilities. Following your analogy, it would be like AOL allowing apps like a browser, email, or IM client to exist without each having to build their own connection client to the internet.
Without that, you get our current state of affairs: masked, false, or redundant identities, scattered within and across many networks (Google Docs, Basecamp, IM, LinkedIn, Twitter, my blog).
Vincent van Wylick
· 2 years ago
"The value and power of Facebook is because of the centralization and peer-verification of identities, which allows it to create a realistic representation of the social graph."
What the hell does that mean?
I'm completely with Scott on this one and am glad someone had the guts to state this opinion. The truth is that there is no need to centralise ALL data, there is a need to centralise data in as far as it's relevant to the function of the network.
Facebook can be personal or business, but mixing it is just bad business. If you ever hired one of your friends and ended up having to fire him/her, you would know that.
I have no desire to mix up my family and friends with my business acquaintances. I want to joke and drink with the first and work and joke and drink (in that order) with the second.
Rob
· 2 years ago
MySpace and Facebook are toaday’s MTV. Their target is 18-22 year-olds. I doubt it will stick with them throughout their lives. For guys, think about it compared to pro wrestling. We all watched it, and we all outgrew it. Some of us when we were 16, some when we were 18, 25, and if you live in the South, maybe later.
After having my Google account recently hacked (in spite of a very strong password) I can actually see a strong case for avoiding centralization. Fortunately, this was one of my spare personal Google accounts that was a highly coveted name I got by being in the first round of Gmail invites. Had it been my primary business Google account with access to things like AdWords, Analytics, Webmaster Central, etc . . . yikes. Consolidation of certain areas is a necessity. But I don't mind spreading things around a bit.
The more I spend time with Facebook the more I'm underwhelmed and just don't understand the hype. Perhaps I need to be 22 (instead of a stodgy 29) or maybe I need to move to San Francisco and work as a tech journalist/blogger so I can over-hype to the latest inner-circle tech trends full time. I hear things like Facebook valued at $8+ billion and I swear it feels like 1999 all over again.
Elad Kehat
· 2 years ago
Scott, this is simply the best commentary on the Facebook issue I've read so far. It's post like this that keep me subscribed to your feed.
The recent attacks on Facebook were long due, given the enormous amount of hype surrounding it lately. Fred Wilson and his ilk are always so consumed by the latest hype washing over silicon valley that they forget to take a more strategic view.
Vincent van Wylick
· 2 years ago
"Facebook is for the MTV-generation / 18-22 year olds" @Rob: That's simply not true. I'm not in that age-range (30) and have discovered many of my classmates on there, who simply want to keep in touch. I'm sure plenty of older folks feel that way too, especially as their physical environment is usually less conductive to large communities the way school or uni are.
If properly managed, I believe Facebook can even become a safe email-system, reserved for just those you know and vice versa. As far as that's concerned, I'm just hoping they release some kind of api for email-clients. It also has great potential as a private picture-sharing place and a private blogging-platform.
Note the private. Facebook is worth nothing to me as a user, if not kept within certain circles.
Rob
· 2 years ago
Vincent - I found no more than 5 people from my 1990 university graduating class and 1986 high school class on Facebook.
What still is up in the air is if the 18-22 demographic will keep using MySpace/Facebook or will move on to LinkedIn or just socialize like most people have done for centuries and get out from behind their computer screens.
I keep up-to-date with my friends via the phone, drinks and dinner and e-mail... novel ideas.
Each category needs its own privacy settings, and you should be able to apply any or all of the three to a given friend.
There's no need to make this into a visible caste system; everyone could and should still be listed simply as "Friends." But being able to easily tailor one's profile to the appropriate audience could be the silver bullet Facebook needs to claim LinkedIn's turf. ...
The current limited-profile option just isn't enough. But it really wouldn't take much.
alicia
· 2 years ago
Scott -
This was a great article; you put many of my own thoughts about Facebook (and MySpace) into words. Best point?
Really, how much more fragmented could my professional apps be? I’ve got Google Docs, Basecamp, IM, LinkedIn, Twitter, my blog [...]
I feel the same way. I won't even get into the number of things I've tried, kept, discarded, forgotten about, found out I didn't have time for, etc.
If you come up with an organized way to keep it all in order without feeling like you're spread out all over the place, let me know, haha.
dave mcclure
· 2 years ago
wow scott... really have to completely disagree with your analysis here. where do i begin?
i'll keep it brief (you can read my blog for more detailed blather & rebuttal):
Facebook isn't "for college kids", it's based on whomever i friend/invite into my network. Thus, it's perfectly reasonable for Facebook to be "about business" if the people in my network are about business... particularly if my network is a work network, and my friends are my business colleagues.
While they may choose to share personal info rather than / in addition to business info on Facebook, keeping in touch with my work & business colleagues and understanding what their behaviors are is EXACTLY what i want to know about... for business.
in my Facebook network, i probably already have over 40-50 VCs, 100+ geeks & entrepreneurs, another 40-50 execs & notable folks at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, MySpace, and other top-tier internet platforms & startups.
while i wouldn't say Facebook has replaced LinkedIn as my primary business networking platform of choice, there's certainly a TON of valuable info for me that's business-focused, and i bet i can get in touch with anyone in Silicon Valley i want using FB as well as LinkedIn.
i won't go into any more detail than this, but characterizing the *functionality* of Facebook as "non-business" is just so far off the mark... all i can say is you need to let us know what you've been smoking so we can all get some too.
as with your diet, so goes your social network... you are what you eat.
Of COURSE Facebook is for business...just like eBay is for business. You can have lots of interaction with people with common interests in Facebook without becoming their Friend. You can just belong to the same groups. And for non-family members, you can use the limited profile to avoid divulging an information about yourself that you think others might find controversial.
Think creatively and you will see lots of business uses for Facebook.
Joe
· 2 years ago
You're kidding right? Don't you see that Facebook is everything that enterprise portals wanted to be, but never could deliver?
FB is the portal, it can meet the personalization challenge that enterprise portals never delivered on. Personalization is not putting my local weather or a clock or stock prices on a page, it is about creating a personalized stream of content that aggregates the activities/contributions of my colleagues. Do that in FB if you want, or do it somewhere else, but you need people's affinity to one another and to groups to do so. FB is designed to let people have affinity to one another and groups, so it is most definitely for work!
Mark
· 2 years ago
You gonna update this? It's December now, and I bet alot of you guys feel different by now!
James
· 1 year ago
@ Mike
True - it needs updating. Facebook seems to react to criticisms and according to a recent USA Today article: Social, work lives collide on networking websites (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetl...), it will implement social circles in acknowledgement of fact that people's lives are made up of zones.
Hasan Luongo
· 1 year ago
Scott - you make some valid points here, the core facebook service does not bode well for business becuase its inherently personal and people began their usage for personal reasons. Therefore people may not want to expose their professional contacts to all that personal info.
But facebook as a people centric social platform has a lot of potential for adding value to business relationships.
The opportunity lies in the fact that linkedin is a pretty static experience and lacks the engagement that facebook provides, in short I find it a bit boring.
Whats exciting is that the solution need not come from facebook itself but from the development community.
(disclosure: im currently working on an exciting app that aims to add business value to the social graph on fb)
Ashique M. Abdullah - Immigrat
· 1 year ago
Facebook has recently added some advanced Privacy Settings that can help its users share each information (Personal Info, Work Info, Photo Albums, etc) in their profiles with specific friends of their choice. That means, for instance, if you do not want your business contacts to view your personal photos, you can always change your privacy settings accordingly. This thing becomes even simpler when you put all your business contacts in a certain category of friends and just type in the category name (e.g. 'Marketers') to restrict them from accessing your certain profile info.
More details about the changes in Facebook Privacy Settings can be found here:
[QUOTE]But business and professional needs are NOT the same as personal needs. I have no need to “poke” my professional colleagues or specify that our working relationship began when we “hooked up.” I don’t need to know about my professional colleagues what gender they are interested in mating with, or what they are looking for in a relationship, or what their favorite TV shows are — these things may be of voyeuristic quasi-social interest, but they don’t help me connect or collaborate professionally (other than maybe topics for idle — or embarrassing — chit-chat).[/QUOTE]
Nicole
· 1 year ago
It's true, Facebook is definitely NOT a business networking site. However, LinkedIn is missing what Facebook IS good at... actually encouraging interaction above and beyond just making the connection. I actually started using www.octopuscity.com for a good combination of business-centric networking, and it also has a free contact manager.
All Comments
My reasons: because if you're using it to find potential employees, you may be opening yourself up to a discrimination suit. Remember, in the U.S. we're not allowed to ask marital status, religion, nor even ask them to send a pic with a resume, lest it prejudice us against them on race or gender.
Even if we don't know now if our employers are googl'ing us, you can bet there will be a way to find out in the future. So, if someone feels they were discriminated against because of something on their Facebook profile, there's some labor lawsuit potential...
That's probably why the Miss NJ/Miss America contestant wasn't fired because of the pics from her Facebook profile...avoiding a lawsuit.
Personally, I don't mind sharing info with the folks who've I've "friended" on Facebook, even if many of them are casual friends I've met at conferences. These are people I clicked with and would probably have a drink with. That may at some point lead to a job, perhaps, depending on the circumstances. And that would be great. That's "networking." And it's a lot less tacky than someone signing you up for his/her newsletter without even an "it was great meeting you" email.
I use Facebook's privacy functions to show one profile to friends, and a limited one to my business contacts. My business contacts can see my contact info, and find out where I work, etc, but not what sex I'm interested, my poetry, etc.
The solution here seems relatively straight forward.
Allow the user to assign connections with different classifications (ie: Business, Family, Acquaintance, etc., not just Friends). Then allow users to customize access levels to their profile, based on user classification. Finally, update the platform API to allow applications to have knowledge of classifications.
The core that currently exists is historic to how Facebook evolved, but as the user base and utility changes, I'm sure Facebook will adapt.
I don't think fragmenting your social graph into networks unaware of each other (ie: Flickr, Delicious, Google Reader) is the most efficient long term solution, and certainly one that's not meaningful to a large mass of users.
Facebook is meant to unify your fragmented networks into one location. I'll agree that the implementation allowing that to happen isn't yet perfect, but they're moving in the right direction.
That's like saying you use AOL to connect to the internet, therefore you should use their browser, their email, their IM.
Fortunately, the Web as platform has finally made "best of breed" a reality.
Even if Facebook develops applications for business, I should be forced to use them just because I used their personal social apps.
AND...this still assumes that all business uses are monolithic -- what about segmenting different business social apps for different professions?
If I OWN my social data, then I can make all of my social apps aware of each other.
The value and power of Facebook is because of the centralization and peer-verification of identities, which allows it to create a realistic representation of the social graph.
With the platform, Facebook relinquished control of how apps segment users for varying topics and utilities. Following your analogy, it would be like AOL allowing apps like a browser, email, or IM client to exist without each having to build their own connection client to the internet.
Without that, you get our current state of affairs:
masked, false, or redundant identities, scattered within and across many networks (Google Docs, Basecamp, IM, LinkedIn, Twitter, my blog).
What the hell does that mean?
I'm completely with Scott on this one and am glad someone had the guts to state this opinion. The truth is that there is no need to centralise ALL data, there is a need to centralise data in as far as it's relevant to the function of the network.
Facebook can be personal or business, but mixing it is just bad business. If you ever hired one of your friends and ended up having to fire him/her, you would know that.
I have no desire to mix up my family and friends with my business acquaintances. I want to joke and drink with the first and work and joke and drink (in that order) with the second.
http://www.businesscommonsense.com/story/story....
The more I spend time with Facebook the more I'm underwhelmed and just don't understand the hype. Perhaps I need to be 22 (instead of a stodgy 29) or maybe I need to move to San Francisco and work as a tech journalist/blogger so I can over-hype to the latest inner-circle tech trends full time. I hear things like Facebook valued at $8+ billion and I swear it feels like 1999 all over again.
The recent attacks on Facebook were long due, given the enormous amount of hype surrounding it lately. Fred Wilson and his ilk are always so consumed by the latest hype washing over silicon valley that they forget to take a more strategic view.
@Rob:
That's simply not true. I'm not in that age-range (30) and have discovered many of my classmates on there, who simply want to keep in touch. I'm sure plenty of older folks feel that way too, especially as their physical environment is usually less conductive to large communities the way school or uni are.
If properly managed, I believe Facebook can even become a safe email-system, reserved for just those you know and vice versa. As far as that's concerned, I'm just hoping they release some kind of api for email-clients. It also has great potential as a private picture-sharing place and a private blogging-platform.
Note the private. Facebook is worth nothing to me as a user, if not kept within certain circles.
What still is up in the air is if the 18-22 demographic will keep using MySpace/Facebook or will move on to LinkedIn or just socialize like most people have done for centuries and get out from behind their computer screens.
I keep up-to-date with my friends via the phone, drinks and dinner and e-mail... novel ideas.
The current limited-profile option just isn't enough. But it really wouldn't take much.
This was a great article; you put many of my own thoughts about Facebook (and MySpace) into words. Best point?
Really, how much more fragmented could my professional apps be? I’ve got Google Docs, Basecamp, IM, LinkedIn, Twitter, my blog [...]
I feel the same way. I won't even get into the number of things I've tried, kept, discarded, forgotten about, found out I didn't have time for, etc.
If you come up with an organized way to keep it all in order without feeling like you're spread out all over the place, let me know, haha.
i'll keep it brief (you can read my blog for more detailed blather & rebuttal):
Facebook isn't "for college kids", it's based on whomever i friend/invite into my network. Thus, it's perfectly reasonable for Facebook to be "about business" if the people in my network are about business... particularly if my network is a work network, and my friends are my business colleagues.
While they may choose to share personal info rather than / in addition to business info on Facebook, keeping in touch with my work & business colleagues and understanding what their behaviors are is EXACTLY what i want to know about... for business.
in my Facebook network, i probably already have over 40-50 VCs, 100+ geeks & entrepreneurs, another 40-50 execs & notable folks at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, MySpace, and other top-tier internet platforms & startups.
while i wouldn't say Facebook has replaced LinkedIn as my primary business networking platform of choice, there's certainly a TON of valuable info for me that's business-focused, and i bet i can get in touch with anyone in Silicon Valley i want using FB as well as LinkedIn.
i won't go into any more detail than this, but characterizing the *functionality* of Facebook as "non-business" is just so far off the mark... all i can say is you need to let us know what you've been smoking so we can all get some too.
as with your diet, so goes your social network... you are what you eat.
- dave "facebook fanboy & sycophant" mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
Think creatively and you will see lots of business uses for Facebook.
FB is the portal, it can meet the personalization challenge that enterprise portals never delivered on. Personalization is not putting my local weather or a clock or stock prices on a page, it is about creating a personalized stream of content that aggregates the activities/contributions of my colleagues. Do that in FB if you want, or do it somewhere else, but you need people's affinity to one another and to groups to do so. FB is designed to let people have affinity to one another and groups, so it is most definitely for work!
True - it needs updating. Facebook seems to react to criticisms and according to a recent USA Today article: Social, work lives collide on networking websites (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetl...), it will implement social circles in acknowledgement of fact that people's lives are made up of zones.
But facebook as a people centric social platform has a lot of potential for adding value to business relationships.
The opportunity lies in the fact that linkedin is a pretty static experience and lacks the engagement that facebook provides, in short I find it a bit boring.
Whats exciting is that the solution need not come from facebook itself but from the development community.
(disclosure: im currently working on an exciting app that aims to add business value to the social graph on fb)
More details about the changes in Facebook Privacy Settings can be found here:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=11519877130
[QUOTE]But business and professional needs are NOT the same as personal needs. I have no need to “poke” my professional colleagues or specify that our working relationship began when we “hooked up.” I don’t need to know about my professional colleagues what gender they are interested in mating with, or what they are looking for in a relationship, or what their favorite TV shows are — these things may be of voyeuristic quasi-social interest, but they don’t help me connect or collaborate professionally (other than maybe topics for idle — or embarrassing — chit-chat).[/QUOTE]