Facebook Not For Business? Pros & Cons (& a followup on OPEN vs BETTER)

gotta get some work done this morning, but a few quick hits on my favorite fanboy topic Facebook:

Facebook: For Business?  Damn Straight.

(photo credit: Bryan Veloso)

 CON: Interesting "Facebook is NOT for Business" post by Scott Karp on Publishing 2.0... but i COMPLETELY DISAGREE.  my Facebook network is full of geeks, entrepreneurs, angels, VCs, internet execs, and other interesting business folks... it most definitely is FOR business.  I think Scott's analysis is way off target: as with your diet, so goes your social network… you are what you eat.

PRO: As a contrast to the above, great post on "Facebook is the Online Hub for Connected Professionals" by Brian Solis on PR 2.0.  his analysis of the recent shift -- no, rather the SEA CHANGE -- in social networking connection behavior by notable bloggers & other geeks & tech business folks is right on target.  i'm a perfect example, as are many others in the conversation. (update: Allen Stern also has a good take on this topic)

Facebook isn't the only example of new communication tools & services being used for both personal & business productivity by business-oriented geeks & other professionals -- Twitter is another notable one, altho these days i'd probably prefer to pipe out my Facebook status updates to Twitter -- but Facebook is certainly the most visible online service causing macro-level changes in human behavior.

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HELP!  My Inbox has Fallen is FULL, and I Can't Get [Caught] Up!

I've also been following Scoble's twitters this morning about how email isn't working for him, and his preference for open / scalable communication via Twitter, Facebook, and blogging in general.  really interesting perspective worth considering.  don't think i'll kill my inbox just yet, but i agree with him my inbox sure as hell is killing me. 

(and apologies to anyone i haven't gotten back to using that medium... i know i'm fucking that up pretty bad right now.  sorry mom :)

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UPDATE: it appears not just Scott Karp. but Scott Gilbertson @ Wired is also full of shit on this topic.  sheesh guys, get a friggin clue -- if we haven't learned this from every goddamn open standards war over the past 20 years:

OPEN is NOT Better... BETTER is Better.

as i've said before, Facebook is not AOL / gated community.  however even if it were, it doesn't mean that an open, non-gated, barren fucking desert is preferable to a lush & pleasant gated community full of lots of good food, drink and all of my friends. 

same argument as to why i'm not sold on OpenID yet either... the UI sucks, and until it doesn't my grandmother is not going to be able to figure that shit out anytime soon.  in the meantime, Google, Yahoo, & Facebook all have proprietary auth systems that are widely used by millions of consumers and are all available for use on external 3rd-party sites... any of which would be a better choice imho than using OpenID (sorry Kaliya, that's how i feel).  I would advise ALL of the startups i work with (consulting, advisory, investment) to use a BETTER proprietary auth system over a LESSER open auth system... because it's BETTER.  not because it's OPEN.

Allen Stern and Fred Wilson appear to get this.  According to Fred:

"...most of Facebook's traditional users (like my two daughters) don't care their data is locked up in Facebook."

right on target Fred.

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to summarize: i'll switch from a "closed" to an "open" social networking system / internet platform not when it's OPEN, but rather when it's BETTER.

it's that goddamn simple.

all you folks who love Open for open's sake: go use lynx, and pound salt.

Comments

[chanezon]

"it doesn't mean that an open, non-gated, barren fucking desert is preferable to a lush & pleasant gated community full of lots of good food, drink and all of my friends."

Ah Ah Ah! You have a deep talent for memorable quotes Dave (you should have worked in ads:-): this one is great enough to figure in an anthology of quotes from the web2.0 bubble!

... although the garden you describe evoked me the garden of Hassan-i-Sabah more anything else, which I guess was not your point:-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin

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[Kay Luo]

Loud Mouth McClure...

I think the reason you are able to mingle your social and business networks is because you are one of the few people I know who will say whatever the [expletive] is on your mind regardless of the situation. People who choose to do business with you get this and love you for it. However, the rest of us repressed folks have different professional and social personas. Conventional wisdom says you should keep these separate.

-Kay

Disclosure: I used to work with Dave at Simply Hired where I tried to get him to curse less in public forums. I now work at LinkedIn.

[Robert Dewey]

...just avoiding your bankrupt e-mail inbox

unfortunately, i used to be one of those idiots until i started using Facebook :)

[Eric Rice]

There are parallels between content, too. User-generated vs. top-down. I spend large amounts of time in user-created virtual worlds, as well as top-down game worlds where users don't have a say.

One of these might be better than other, but we're debating access and lower barriers to aesthetics and quality, which might is circle-spinning as we can get. :)

[Robert Dewey]

my virgin eyes... too... much... swearing...

okay, not really. good points though.

[allen]

Excellent points Dave, thanks for linking me up and commenting on CN - I linked you from my post too.

Your summary is dead on. Open has to be better. This might be some of the reason why OpenID hasn't taken off yet.

[Dave]

you're entitled to your opinion mario, and regardless i'm still a user of LinkedIn; however, i specifically DO mingle my business & social networks... because at this point in my life, they are pretty much the same thing.

i play ultimate with VCs and entrepreneurs.

i go to 2-year old birthday parties, and randomly bump into major Internet execs.

i do business with people i'm friends with because they ARE my friends. (in fact, didn't i meet you and help make an intro to LinkedIn thru our social networks? ;)

check this scenario with any historical precedent, and/or spend some time in Japan, and i think you'll find the same.

[Mario Sundar]

Dang, I hate the refresh button. Lost everything I was typing in here. Anyways, dude, long story short.

I've always found your posts insightful (particularly the recent ones - great stuff). However, I just wanted to share that I personally prefer keeping my social and business networks separate although there could be an overlap between the two. (Disclosure: I'm LinkedIn's community evangelist)

Let me put it this way: Those professional contacts whom I hang out with on a social basis are allowed in my social network, but otherwise, IMO, the twain shall never meet. Just my $0.02.

Mario from LinkedIn
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