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
