Saturday, November 21, 2009

facebook observations

When I speak recently, I get asked what are the values of facebook.com and twitter.

I continue to struggle with those questions.  I find that alot of good business has come from linkedin connections.

Most know that I believe the more professional linkedin network to be responsible for our driving real revenue to our business.  When I speak about social networking that is the number one questions most have for me.

But lately, when I help people realize that real revenue is possible, their next question is, "What about facebook and twitter?"

I can say that I find myself on facebook more than anything else.  I blog on the notes.  I run several fan pages and blog on those notes.  I find the events useful even though I cannot block unwanted "friends" from putting events on my events feed.  I can remove those events though.

Facebook does have lots of distractions.  There ought to be a "professional" setting that keeps those distractions away for good.  However, more and more people are on facebook (300 MM plus).  So, if you don't have a way for them to find you and call you, then you could be missing contact.  Try this: use your own cell phone facebook app and search for your own name.  When that comes up, can you click "call" to call a number or is "message" all you see?

I used this to find someone recently who hadn't put their number on any of their emails.  I realized then, if I want people to be able to find me, then I have to make it easy.

So, why twitter?  Twitter like facebook is "cell friendly" so finding a way to interact makes more and more sense.  So, what can you do?

Friendfeed.com makes twitter.com make sense.  Twitter conversations are hard to follow.  On Friendfeed, they make sense.

The other thing to consider is that all of these networks overlap.  Find a way to use all of these sites without much trouble and you will benefit from the larger number of people you can talk to.

Eric Standlee