social media, social networks

Facebook review

Facebook seems to be new cool Social Networking toy of choice.

It is a cool app, it has to be said, with the ability to easily create networks and groups of like-minded individuals.

More than that, it has an api which allows 3rd parties to create apps which hook into it easily. Tripadvisor have developed a “Cities I have visited” app which simply allows you to add in the names of places you have visited and it plots them on a map! Sounds simple but it is curiously addictive and similarly for the iRead app (books you have read and can review), iLike for music, Twitter and there’s even a Marketplace (for items for sale, rent, Jobs, etc.).

The social networking aspect is like LinkedIn‘s but  with the advantage that you get to see a photo of the person you are linking to if they have uploaded one. This is always handy if you are browsing one of your contact’s list of friends and you recognise a face but wouldn’t have remembered the name!

Also handy is the ‘river of news‘ information flow from your friends as they update their profiles, their apps, or their Friends list.

There are one or two things which could be improved in Facebook –

1. As Jon Udell pointed out this morning, it always annoys me that when adding a new Friend, there is no ‘Met Online’ option . Consequently I find myself clicking the Skip this Step button and

2. The email from Facebook is painfully slow. If I check the Requests page, I often see requests to connect from people I know who I haven’t added as friends yet. I add them and two to three days later, I receive an email telling me that that friend wants to connect and I should check the Requests page!

Facebook is rapidly becoming the Social Networking tool of choice for professionals – rapidly catching up on (if it hasn’t already overtaken) LinkedIn and Xing. It has a far richer user experience than either LinkedIn or Xing and it has the advantage of being free whereas full functionality in LinkedIn or Xing requires payment.

14 thoughts on “Facebook review”

  3. Hi Tom,
    Facebook has been around for ages now but I’ve resisted trying it out and I’m especially put off by what I’ve read of it lately. I’ve seen quite a few posts on LinkedIn Answers (I think they were under the Using LinkedIn section) from people who also have Facebook membership and complained of being spammed with invites from God knows who.
    I wonder if it’s just US users or if anyone else here who has signed up on both suffered this?

    I’m still working on my LinkedIn network and think I’ll stick with it for now.

  4. Come to think of it, maybe it was Jobster that spam came from. Either way, I’ll stick with LinkedIn and miss out on the extra social features for now!

  5. Pingback: Figuring out Facebook « methememe

  6. big fan of facebook lately and for strict professional networking LinkedIn still wins. however, for the record, facebook gives your business network a nice flair is what I’m noticing.

    both applications support zapping in your web address books and i think it’s a matter of educating the online community to responsibly invite people you have some level of relatedness with rather than spamming your entire address book.

    on the other hand, to be fair – one could argue you’re not really the judge as to who your friends are online and if you’ve connected once here and there – why not invite them?

    i’d also assert the best social networking applications are able to put a large number of “friends”/contacts in context – they help you find the needle in the haystack!

    I can’t wait to see dynamic, organically-driven filters and views that are more on the fuzzy side – ones that begin to aggregate meta data extracted from multiple facebook apps for the purpose of matchmaking for example!

  7. My Dad signed up on this thing, and suckered me into signing up.. Now every time he does anything on facebook, I get an e-mail in my inbox. It’s the worst spam I’ve ever seen.

  8. Got sucked into joining last summer, previously I had written it off as a random internet fad. After a while of being a member, I began to realise the networking and marketing potential of it. Have created one or two Facebook apps, and met a load of good contacts.

  9. short and crisp review. good.

    Interesting, this is such an old review and Facbook still lacks like ‘Met Online’ check-box. if nothing, at least there can be a check-box for ‘some other way’.

    Very new on Facebook. Need to explore the app writing part of it for my travel experience website – http://www.ghumakkar.com

  10. @Oh My God: I understand the slew of emails can be very annoying. Have you turned off email notifications and/or put a filter on any facebook emails that still trickle through?

    I haven’t seen an email from facebook in ages and facebook works great when you visit the space when you choose to (opposed to it asking you to go there)

    I do this for all sites in general I see myself active in whether it is a blog, forum, social networking, or even twitter.

    @Nandan: I agree with you. I created a friend group names “virtual” to manage this and Lee Aase has an excellent tutorial I just went through to create a clear boundaries for your professional friends:

    http://social-media-university-global.org/2008/04/17/facebook-limited-profile-professional-friends/

    cheers!

  11. You have to turn off all those alerts or Facebook is just going to drive you nuts. Especially now with apps and news. Annoying stuff. Social networking is always better when it is catered to a smaller crowd. Less mass appeal type additions are made to the site when the focus is smaller.

  13. Facebook sucks, got tired of it .so boring you can’t even talk to your friends thru a webcam, skype is better. who cares what somebody is doing , going or just complaining about life…….

  14. Facebook sucks, got tired of it .so boring you can’t even talk to your friends thru a webcam, skype is better. who cares what somebody is doing , going or just complaning.

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