So I was reading an article this morning entitled "Fogeys Flock to Facebook". Seems the traditional press is recognizing the shift of many professionals my age from LinkedIn (a valuable but rather staid, boring place after all) to Facebook. In multiple instances, the article asks if Facebook's world of pokes, spanks and beer can keep professionals interested.
I find this question completely ludicrous.
First of all, as a professional, I am sorely desirous of a place where I can 1) network with existing friends and colleagues, 2) meet new potential friends, colleagues and clients, and 3) get interesting updates from them in real-time. THAT, my friends, is what Facebook provides... and in spades compared to LinkedIn.
If you don't like "spanks", don't install the "X Me" application. If you don't like having someone buy you a virtual beer, don't install the "Happy Hour" application. It's pretty simple. You can junk up or strip down your Facebook profile to whatever age-appropriate level you'd like.
What Facebook Does Have
Facebook has a number of advantages over competitors.
First, the walled garden approach means that your information is more private than that on MySpace. You can share a little more openly without fear that it will end up in the Google database for public review. This includes Facebook status updates, which remain unsearched. Everything that you Twitter, on the other hand, ends up forever archived, publicly.
Secondly, the ability to post a link, photo or video from anywhere to your Facebook profile. That del.icio.us-like ability means that you don't have to go searching for nor link to someone's fave links...they're right there in the profile.
Third, interesting apps. Some of these are juvenile ("X Me!", "Zombies" and Food Fight), some are TMI (Horoscope, Cities I've Visited), but some are really very cool (Scrabulous, Causes, TextMe, Meetups, and Traveler IQ Challenge). LinkedIn has no serious functionality like this.
Most of us have had it beaten into us to never mix religion or politics with business, but I suspect this is changing too as we gravitate toward those people who are more open online than those who are opaque. You might see my personal interest in sustainable living, and you might reach out to me about that. A business relationship with that shared interest might be more fruitful than one where we're both relatively unknown to each other.
And if you're skeptical or critical of the sustainability movement, perhaps we wouldn't have worked well together anyway.
Fourth: controlled UI. The fact that one can't add an animated background to their Facebook profile means that they can't push their bad taste in graphics on everyone else. YAY.
Facebook Alternatives for Us Fogeys
MYSPACE: Like many other "fogeys", I began to network on MySpace but found that the glittery bullshit graphics, spammers and occasional outright weirdness was very difficult to filter or control. People junked up their pages with videos, music and animations that slowed my computer to a crawl. Add all that up and now my MySpace page gets very little attention.
LINKEDIN: I'm on LinkedIn, of course, and the ability to network with colleagues and post and receive testimonials is great. But, strangely enough, more and more people are linking their personal lives with their professional ones. Increasing numbers of folks are wanting to make more solid connections with others, through personal interests, causes, or events - or through topics that are relevant to them. And Facebook is great for that.
I'm not alone in seeing this trend of 30- to 50-year-olds shifting over to Facebook. There's a great article by Jeff Pulver on his official move from LinkedIn to Facebook, and why he did it.
RYZE: Remember Ryze, the original business network? It started out in 2003-2004 as a cool place to connect with others. But it quickly became overloaded with get-rich-quick types and Amway-style pyramid marketers. It lost its value in a hurry and I bailed. It's now a shadow of its former self.
INWYK/KNOWMENTUM: I also joined INWYK ("ItsNotWhatYouKnow") in 2004, which indeed seemed to have some momentum at the time. But it had comparatively few subscribers, and now the site just generates a server error.
SOFLOW: A British network consisting of hundreds of forums, early SoFlow had a lot of really interesting conversations. Steve Hall, author of the fabulously popular AdRants blog, created an AdRants community on SoFlow that attracted a lot of folks from the ad biz. Strangely, SoFlow pulled the plug on itself on July 31st of this year, and Hall repurposed his huge community as "AdGabber", a subset of Ning. Many a SoFlow refugee left for AdGabber.
NING: Ning is interesting. Anyone can go there and set up a new social network for free. After the closing of SoFlow, multiple related communities sprung up on Ning, such as "Ad:Bree" (scientists are still trying to determine what "Bree" is for), a community for online marketers, and MediaStarz.
Ning, however, may encounter the same detrimental issues as Ryze. I'm noticing more and more irrelevant, self-serving cross-promotion. Young teens who want singing careers, creating profiles on AdGabber and befriending as many old men as possible (many of whom seem to just want to add a pretty, young [if completely unrelated] face to their Friendslist).
Only time will tell where these fogey networks will net out. My money, for now, is on Facebook.
My one question to the Facebook team concerns the directory listings: when will they indeed "find something to put here"?