Is Facebook taking over the world? -Part two of a 3 part series on Social Networking. August 22, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , trackback
Is Facebook taking over the world?
By Mark Blei
Part two of a 3 part series on Social Networking.
When Facebook opened up to the general public earlier this year I decided to conduct a small experiment, to see the difference between the admittedly stodgy LinkedIn environment and a more fluid, cozier one like Facebook. So I exported my LinkedIn contacts, uploaded them into Facebook, and started sending out invitations. I very quickly realized that the one thing I needed was two Facebook accounts- one for business, and one for personal use. I certainly didn’t need my business contacts seeing any of the off-hand or off-color remarks that good friends make to each other. If you remember from my last article I’m a very well known LinkedIn user with over 2000 connections in a “closed network”, meaning that I don’t allow my contacts to go through my list or network of contacts. As of now I have 300 Facebook contacts in my business profile and that number , while significant, was still fractional compared to the amount of contacts that I had as a whole on other sites. As I sent out my first round of Facebook invitations I got an email from one of my LinkedIn contacts asking me why I was befriending him on Facebook. I explained that I wanted to see the difference between the two networks. He sent me back an email asking me how it was going. My reply to him was this. “You have been a LinkedIn contact of mine for 2 years now, and beyond the initial request to link, we’ve never spoken to each other.” Think about that for a second. Just that dialogue right there should say a lot about why other social networks should be very scared of Facebook.
Let me lay some facts on you. In Canada, where over 10% of the total Facebook population resides, one third of all Canadians are members. Not one third of all Canadians online, but one third of the entire populace of the country of Canada. There was a recent article in Techcrunch discussing whether Facebook might be the next Microsoft. I think that they will be, and here’s why. Out of those 300 + connections in my Facebook business account, I have never received one piece of unwanted mail. I can definitely tell you that I can’t say the same for LinkedIN- as a matter of fact, I get spammed by one of my LinkedIn contacts at least every day. Up until recently you couldn’t send out email to people that were not in your friend list which also means that every single person who mails you through the interface has to be pre approved by you. That is up until recently when Facebook announced that they would start allowing people to email outside the interface. But still, because of the way the interface is set up it’s virtually impossible for someone to spam me. That’s right not one email trying to get me to use V1@G7A or any of the various other scams that spammers pull. And that’s actually very pleasant.
The open application development area is in its infancy, and while I’m swamped with invitations to become a zombie or werewolf, or to load or use any number of childish and stupid
applications, Facebook allows people to design applications which only work in the Facebook environment. And while the zombie application might be nothing but annoying, six months from now when a new application for a shared calendar is developed that allows small companies to not only share appointments but perhaps share spreadsheets, files, PowerPoint presentations etc., Facebook is going to be a major contender in the marketplace, in part because their applications cannot be used on any other platform. Already there are human resources applications for recruitment companies where other people who know me can score me on the effectiveness of my work, therefore allowing possible recruiters to see how I’m thought of by other people who I’ve worked with. Already, Facebook has much the same newsreader functionality as well as the IGoogle all in a one page linkage that it took Google years to come out with.
And what’s more interesting is my wife. My wife, who, while being an internet junkie and long-term nerd, (who would you expect would have me, Kate Moss?), hates all things mainstream and pop culture. Hates them with such vehemence that when she saw me playing around with the Facebook application loudly groaned and exclaimed “Oh, no- not another stupid social network tool.”
My wife now spends a significant portion of her day turning people into Pirates, sending virtual drinks, and writing notes on the walls of her friends who live within blocks of us. I don’t think that my wife is the exception- I think that she’s the norm. And I think that we should all be watching Facebook to see what they are going to do in the future. It may just be the next “killer app.” if you have a thought then please leave it on this blog or …look me up on Facebook.
This posting is a personal opinion article by Mark Blei who is in International Business Development for Dynamic Logic Inc and the author of this blog. None of the content of this article is meant to be an opinion of Dynamic Logic, It’s parent company Millward Brown or anybody but the writer.
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