Category: Social Media

Sabrena Suri, a CNET News.com intern, is creeped out by Old Married Guys in Facebook asking to be her friend. (That, by the way, is why I never intiate a Facebook friendship with people under 30. If they ask to be my friend, it’s fine.) I don’t think most people in her age group would have a problem with people her parents’ age networking for professional reasons in Facebook, as long as we don’t ask to be her friend.

And even if she does have a problem with it, it doesn’t really matter. By opening up to anyone over 13 with an email address, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided that the site will not remain just for college students. As the cover story in the current issue of Newsweek explains:

Speaking with NEWSWEEK between bites of a tofu snack, (Zuckerberg) is much more interested in explaining why Facebook is (1) not a social-networking site but a “utility,” a tool to facilitate the information flow between users and their compatriots, family members and professional connections; (2) not just for college students, and (3) a world-changing idea of unlimited potential… But the nub of his vision revolves around a concept he calls the “social graph.”

The reason Facebook appeals to non-creepy old married guys is because we can connect with high school and college classmates we haven’t seen in a couple of decades. We can be Facebook friends with our kids (again, I waited for them to invite me) and with some of their friends. And because Facebook is, as Zuckerberg says, not just a networking site but a utility. I can do neat things like share really big files that are too big for email attachments through MediaFire‘s Facebook application, for instance. Or I can share video in a more protected space than YouTube, and with better quality. Like the video of my daughter’s wedding.

Most importantly, I don’t have to worry about creepy come-ons from (allegedly) young women named “Ivy” or “Karan” or “Zada” who want to be my “friends” on MySpace. I have a MySpace page because I thought I should, as part of my work, to understand how each site works. With one exception, these are the only kinds of friend requests I have gotten in MySpace:

And when I log in and check the profile for “Zada” I see this:

To be fair, I haven’t done a lot of updating of my MySpace profile to have any really meaningful information there, so that’s probably why I get the porn spammers. (At least I assume that’s what they are; I haven’t ever clicked the View My Pictures link.)

But Facebook seems much less susceptible to such shenanigans. Without exception, every friend request I’ve gotten in Facebook seems to be someone who shares a common interest that they have discovered either through reading my blog or within Facebook.So, if you’ve found my blog interesting, you can friend me in Facebook, too.

What’s your experience? Do you have profiles in Facebook, MySpace or both? What is the quality of the friend requests you receive?

Technorati: Facebook, MySpace, social networking, MediaFire, Sabrena Suri, CNET, friends, friend requests, creepy, married, spam

Many consider Facebook‘s wonderful usefulness for personal networking a liability when it comes to business use of Facebook. They think personal and professional B2B networking shouldn’t be mixed in one platform. They’re particularly concerned about personal photos, videos and wall posts causing embarassment in their work world.

I’ve written before about how the Limited Profile in Facebook can eliminate many of these concerns. One problem that remains is the presence of your applications as part of your profile. You may not want to share your 24 Quote of the Day with your colleagues and customers.
So, here’s a way that you can maintain all of your professional contacts in Facebook, without divulging any personal information.

Create a Group in Facebook, like I did with Lee Aase’s Professional Contacts. You can have all of your professional business information there, with nothing personal. You can set yourself as the only one who can upload photos or videos. If anyone “tags” you in a Facebook photo, it won’t show up in this group. I suggest you name it with that same naming convention I used, i.e. “Joe Smith’s Professional Contacts.” You’ll see why in a bit.

When people search for your professional contacts group, they will get a result like this.

By calling it “FirstName LastName’s Professional Contacts” it will be easy for people to find your group, even if your name is common, like Joe Smith.

The other thing you can do is put a link to this group in the side navigation of your blog, like I did near the top right of mine.

However they get there, by searching in Facebook or by clicking a link in your blog, people can join the group to be among your Professional Contacts.

They don’t have to become your Friend and share personal information. They can send you messages within Facebook, and you can send them messages, just by being part of the same group. Having the group merely enables you to keep a list of their names handy. And if they reciprocate by forming their own Professional Contacts groups, they can build a similar profile that has only their relevant professional information, not their favorite movies, politicans, TV shows or Whom they worship. But it can have their phone, address and other contact information, to make Facebook a useful Rolodex for professional information.

Note: If you do this you likely will want to change your “Poke, Message and Friend Request” privacy settings, so that when you send a Facebook message it won’t open your profile. I’ve dialed back my settings for this reason, not so much because I’m that concerned about my privacy, but for demonstration purposes.

Is this the perfect solution? No. Ideally we will want a separate class of “friend” that lets us completely manage what information we want to share. I’m sure that’s coming. But this is a MacGyveresque workaround that has the benefit of creating an alternate profile with only professionally relevant information.

Update Sept. 1, 2008: This post is now over a year old, and as I had predicted, the ability to group friends and assign different levels of access to your profile to various kinds of friends is now available. To learn how to do this, see Facebook 210: Professional Profile, Personal Privacy.