I’ve heard Leo Laporte talk about Facebook at lot on the TWIT Podcasts and I have an account, but I have to confess that I just don’t get it.
To me it looks as if Facebook is nothing more than LinkedIn, but for personal stuff. Am I wrong?
At first I thought it was more of a personal hub that pulled all your online content into one place. For example, I thought that it would pull my Flickr photos, Twitter and all my blogs into one “digital hub”, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
I figure I must just be missing something so I thought I’d make a quick post for some feedback while I go digging for a review, or something to that effect.
Facebook can pull your twitter feeds and Flickr streams in. But that isn’t the point of Facebook (to be an all-in-one place). You also have it a little backwards…Linked-In is a business version of Facebook. Facebook is a cleaned-up, simplified, controlled version of MySpace. That’s how they came out anyway.
Robert Scoble (or Scobel) has a pretty good argument about this. He says its also a digital rolodex and that it stores all that the key information about your friends.
Its also a decent way to outsource your needs. Although I have no idea how it compares vis a vis facebook.
Its also a way to contact key people via email. For instance if you wanted to contact X person in the Obama campaign or X person at a tech company, you would likely be able to find that person with a search and an email.
With the advent of advertising on facebook in a big way this last week…I have a feeling the potential uses go up significantly.
Have you read the ongoing conversation about “Social Graph”?
Finally, Jeremiah O. the Web Strategist and http://www.chrisbrogan.com both have alot of reasons why facebook and socialmedia are helpful.
Paul —
Thank you for helping to clear the disconnect. Ultimately, that’s what I learned Facebook to be and you helped clarify that. Thanks.
Nathan —
Good links and feedback, thank you.
One of the things that I’ve come to realize since writing this entry is that there appears to be an age element in the uptake for Facebook. Older people, myself included, tend to not “get it”, where as younger generations take to it much more easily.
Scoble has hit the limit on how many people he can add to his contacts in Facebook, so I can see how Facebook works as a rolodex for him. I guess for me, I have an address book, so I don’t see the point. Again, age divide. I’ve already setup systems for these types of things, so I think that’s why I don’t see it as clearly as he does. That being said, I do agree that it’s an excellent networking tool and I should use it more for that.
What got me so confused about Facebook from the start was that I had heard so much about how it was being pitched as a platform and not just a site. The Facebook API, the ability to run Facebook “software” all made it sound like it was much more than it was.
I haven’t given up on Facebook though. I still play with it now and again, it’s just that I had to lower my expectations of what the site was, cut through the marketing speak and use the site for how it was intended.
Thanks again for your comment!