7 Responses

1. Face book junk mail
   Hi I am a member of facebook and to e honest it has both good and bad points. The walls etc are a quick way of getting messages out to all of your “friends” however you also find a lot of secondary sites logged to facebook that rely on numbers to keep going. To this aim they insist that you send an invite to everyone in you address book before being able to join or access answers to a quiz etc. At the moment I get roughly 2 a day of these and I have not got too many “friends”. My brother has over 600 friends and is innundated with these messages.

   Hope this helps.

   Tracey Saunders

2. access
   I too have a Facebook account – and like Tracey have numerous requests to sign up to quizzes and other applications.

   The main point I would like to make is that not everyone has access during the working day to social networking sites. The company I work for is part of a wider group who have banned access to Facebook and not just core working hours.

3. Facebook comments
   These comments are really helpful – I had heard about the ‘quizes’ and it’s a good point that you’ve raised about some organisations banning social networking at work. Many thanks.
   Susie

4. Get Linked-In or get left out!
   Dear Susie

   I have had a Facebook account for some time (feel free to Poke Me!), but I have to say that I have found very little practical use for it in my business and professional life.

   For one thing, the demographics are currently all wrong. Whilst Facebook is virtually ubiquitous amongst the teens and early twenties there seem to be very few Generation X senior professionals out there! And as an old-fuddy duddy in my forties I find Facebook a little overwhelming. There are so many things going on within the interface that I find it hard to focus in the very limited time that I can afford to devote to Facebook.

   By contrast, I find Linked In hugely useful for professional purposes and the value to me seems to be going up every day as my network and UK usage expands.

   Linked In is growing very rapidly, with over 17 million users worldwide. It is increasingly becoming a key career tool for professionals.

   You can find out more about Linked In in a Fortune Magazine Article entitled “Why you’ll finally use Linked In” at:

   http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/14/technology/fastforward_linkedin.fortune/index.htm?section=money_latest

   It also featured in The Independent on January 6th.

   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/the-grey-guy-of-networking-learns-to-mix-it-with-the-poster-boys-768414.html

   Regards

5. Linked In
   I too have a Linked Account, though I dont think I’m making full use of it.

   From a business perspective I think Linked In will provide better long term opportunities.

   Please feel free to join my network!

6. Thankyou
   I’ll certainly consider LinkedIn instead of Facebook now! Thankyou for your helpful advice.
   Susie

7. Don’t sweat it!
   First, a confession: I am writing my masters’ dissertation on how the use of social media has transformed my practice as a learning professional.

   Which explains why I have a MySpace account (which I have hardly ever used), a Facebook page, which I use daily, a few blogs and a wiki as well as accounts with LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, Flickr, Animoto and Shelfari. Plus several others I’ve probably forgotten right now!

   I have tended to use LinkedIn and one of my blogs for purely professional contacts, while another of my blogs is purely to track my learning journey on my MA. I have another blog which is dedicated to family matters for the benefit of farflung family.

   What I decided to try with Facebook was to mash them all up together. So my Facebook friends list consists of family – immediate and extended, personal friends, contacts from my leisure time pursuits, and professional contacts from all over the world. I have joined Facebook groups that are purely for fun, some alumni groups, some “causes” and some
   that are in pursuit of my professional interests.

   As a consequence, I have contributed to the research of two other MA students – one from the US and one from Canada. I have played an online version of Scrabble with friends and family and with some rather key members of my community of professional practice. I have made contact with old schoolfriends and ex-boyfriends. I have saved a few square feet of rainforest (apparently).

   I would say, go for it. Once you have, I suspect you’ll look back and wonder why you agonised over the decision. It’s really less of a major one than you seem to think. If you don’t like it or don’t find it useful, you can close your account, but there’s no harm in giving it a go.