While I admire many Facebook features, the site is woefully weak in adding value to “Facebook suggestions,” (right) which are those frustrating messages that appear on the upper right column of your Home Page. It would be easy to write off if they were just a waste, but what’s more provocative is that Facebook is missing a huge opportunity, which I’ll discuss briefly here. Secondly, I’ll show that most Facebook members are missing the chance to get some help from this feature, as lame as it currently is.
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Before I dive into that, however, hats off to the GigaOM team, who have been doing some excellent reporting on Facebook’s “opening up” to the Web. Check them out. Continue reading Visions of Facebook 2.0 Using Facebook with LinkedIn to Speed up the Relationship Life Cycle
Meetings with prospective clients usually include sports, culture, family and light politics/news… things that people share on Facebook. Continue reading Using Facebook to Accelerate Time to TrustQuick Thoughts on How Facebook Compares to LinkedIn and Twitter
Adding to the confusion, Facebook has a LinkedIn Group, and LinkedIn has Facebook and Twitter groups. I encourage you to spend some time there if you are interested in how they can work together. Here I’ll present my back-of-the-envelope thoughts, and I encourage you to share yours in comments. Continue reading Comparing Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for Developing Business Relationships The Power of Emergent Organization
Continue reading Web 2.0 Strategy: Comparing Facebook and MySpace Expansion Strategy
Last week, I took the New York Times’ Facebook Exodus to task as an exceptionally lame example, and here I’ll offer a briefer treatment of a Wall Street Journal article, How Facebook Can Ruin Relationships. Unfortunately, but very predictably, the journalists and editors that are responsible for these articles are not terribly knowledgeable about social networks. Take this into account when reading. This backlash will discredit social networks in the short term, and you can use this to your advantage by continuing to use them in your business while others are napping. Social networks will remake society because they change the economics of communication and relationships. Those who use them will create a significant advantage for themselves. Continue reading What and how to Share on Facebook and TwitterV8NVR4N4GVT8 The baby is born!.. After struggling to get the last member of the triad out of the gate, we’re finally here. In 2009, have been working with executives around the US to use Facebook for their businesses and personally, and the Executive’s Guide to Facebook will share vital information to help you understand it and create business value. In 2010, expect to see:
I invite you to respond in comments with items on your wishlist! |
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Copyright © 2010 Executive's Guide to Facebook - All Rights Reserved |
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Facebook has a bold strategy that mashes up the social graph with the Web—in the service of using digital transactions to develop in-depth understanding of people. This has far-reaching implications for what “public information” about you and your friends may soon look like. It will likely redefine the concept of privacy, so it is definitely a development to watch.
When I suggest to executives using Facebook to accelerate the time to trust for business relationships, I usually get a raised eyebrow or an incredulous stare. However their attitude quickly changes when I ask them to reflect on the last three business lunches they had with prospects and what they talked about.
Business executives like to put Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms in the same category with each other, “social networks,” and they often ask me which one is “best.” This approach is normal when considering an emerging phenom like Web 2.0 venues, but it is not the right way to think: although Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others all enable your company to engage your stakeholders, each venue is so distinct and the techniques of engagement so different, that they do not allow an apples to apples comparison. That said, here I will describe each platform’s uniqueness and suggest how you can use it to develop business relationships.
Facebook and MySpace have distinct strategies for global expansion that hold crucial lessons for executives. Facebook is following a quintessentially Web 2.0 strategy while MySpace is pursuing a more traditional publishing model that most mature businesses will recognize. The results, although somewhat preliminary, clearly show the relative advantages to Facebook’s approach, so here I’ll offer a brief description of the two and suggest learnings that you might apply to your business.