Thinking YOU can Ignore Facebook? Lessons from Revolution Health & A Space

     Not sure how it is for you but for me it seems everywhere I go, there is Facebook. TIME Magazine has pronounced "Why Facebook Is the Future".  The Financial Times under a headline "Route to social success" interviews Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about his plans for Facebook and reports backers "think it is worth $8bn-$10bn".

     The New Zealand Herald is focused on the productivity issues with employees devoting work hours to Facebook costing companies billions. The New York Times reports a successful viral consumer campaign started in Facebook that has Cadbury Schweppes bringing back the Wispa chocolate bar on a test basis. Martha Stewart has a Facebook profile.

     Already in July Scoble and Calcanis were discussing "Facebook fatigue".  Edge technology users in my circle are already abandoning Facebook because it's too many clicks.  It will be REAL interesting seeing whether the member and site activity growth since Facebook opened their platform to developers May 24 can continue.

      Online all aspects of Facebook are dissected ranging from the privacy issues associated with Facebook exposing member profiles to search engines to whether the arrival of the older crowd will deter founding college student members from using Facebook. A flurry of Facebook Groups trying to figure out Facebook for doing business have emerged.

      What's occupying me however are recent conversations with people who think they can ignore Facebook. Thanks to Mark Meaney, a new found Facebook friend, this past weekend I discovered Revolution Health's use of Facebook Groups to reach their audiences.  Smart I thought.  Knowing Revolution Health's CEO is AOL founder Steve Case, I'm paying attention.

       Then through Valids Krebs Network Weaving blog a fascinating post on A Space, a  social networking platform for the intelligence industry the Financial Times reports is being  developed by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence.

       For me whether or not Facebook emerges as THE social networking platform for business is still to be decided. I don't know but I'm betting, (based on industry history), that leading enterprise platform providers like Microsoft and IBM, as well as startups we are yet to learn about, have developers working away to claim that space.  Hopefully they are also working on providing automated activity data collection for group administrators.  In my view if Facebook wants to be a serious contender for business networking, metrics are essential.   

        Meantime rather than ignore Facebook I'd encourage all organizations to experiment and see how a Facebook type platform might create value for your business.  And the main reason is what Valdis Krebs highlights in his assessment of whether A Space will succeed:

"IMHO, just putting social web technology into a strong culture, averse to sharing and connecting, will not change how things get done. MySpace and Facebook worked because they were dropped into cultures eager to connect. The IC needs to get the sociology right before they support a new culture with new technology."      

Making successful use of a Facebook like platform is not about the technology. It involves new mindsets and openness that in my experience seriously stretch traditional organizations.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Comments

[Jeffrey Keefer]

Jenny, I think this is an interesting piece, and while I have a Facebook account but have not yet been sold on it (as it is a closed system that does not allow for any exporting of content or accessibility by anybody except members), this sounds like a sales pitch for it:

>>Meantime rather than ignore Facebook I'd encourage all organizations to experiment and see how a Facebook type platform might create value for your business<<

Part of this is because I am not sure I agree with Valdis's assessment. I think the shiny object syndrome, an almost unlimited bandwidth / space, and integrated email / postings within a portal are all factors that influence its popularity. Those were some of the things that made AOL popular at first (and look what happened to them and Steve Case in the process at the end).

I agree that there is a lot of utility with Facebook, yet since it is still considered as a social networking site for college students and a black-hole for wasting time, many organizations do not allow it behind their firewalls http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=3505273

With this said, perhaps these varied factors may help competitors step-aside the issues to build a single application to fill a variety of niches without some of the same baggage?

[Robin Yap]

Although I enjoy my Facebook account and the various apps that are available, I am aware of the security issues (I posted about their privacy issues here - http://tinyurl.com/3dvuts) and therefore use it more for its social value (play games, send aquarium fishes, etc) not its potential for organisational use.

This is especially important considering that I live in the city where Facebook's membership is the highest at around 800k (Toronto) so its important to participate in the discussions whenever I am able to.

Good post Jenny

[Michael Clarke]

Well, you already know I'm a Facebook fan (albeit with qualifications), Jenny. Though I'm interested to see what happens with Yahoo's Mash (I've sent you an invite). Are they too late? Or will they establish a more open model that provides a genuine alternative? At the moment, I find Facebook's ubiquity the most disturbing thing about it, though I have the same issues with their closed-fistedness about one's datastreams.

[Jenny Ambrozek]

Jeffrey, Robin & Michael, Thank you all for being fabulous collaborators who push disciplined thinking upon me.

Absolutely Jeffrey about the need for easy to use and inviting platforms for employee networking in and beyond the enterprise for business purposes without the Facebook "baggage".

Robin, great post reminding us all about paying attention to Terms of Use and understanding the reality of what data and content rights users don't have.

Michael, considering your points about "Facebook's" ubiquity the most disturbing thing about it and adding your "closed-fistedness about one's datastreams" to my vocabulary.

Apologies for delay in responding. On west coast last week that included the privilege of fascinating sessions at the Health 2.0 Conference. When I figure how to navigate time between work, family, Facebook and this blog good intentions to share!!

~ Jenny

[Azam Khan]

Its worth it for businesses to take advantage of facebook at the moment by using groups/apps. The thing is that it takes time to actually not sound like you're spamming but instead making actual human(s)-human(s) contact and putting in time/effort with meaningful dialogue. As far as facebook's success.. the semantic web and web3.0 progressions will bring with them new platforms for social connectivity across the net ( as opposed to being in a walled garden ). So if facebook can make that leap then ys it can succeed in the long run.
-Azam Khan
http://www.revupnet.com

[Ron Liland]

Great post.
I have to come clean and say that I have been trying to ignore Facebook for a long time.
About a week ago, I caved in and joined it. Thought I'm far from being hooked, I like it enough to keep my account active.
Hey, if it weren't through facebook, I'd probably miss this interesting blog.