Hi,

As Terry mentioned in the PSVillage newsletter today, we have been thinking about Facebook and whether it has any place in keeping our community in touch.

My 21 year old daughter thinks Facebook should stay closed to the school community. But it is clear, momentum is swinging towards business activities migrating into the Facebook community. So, with some hesitation I joined Facebook last week. I dragged along one of my colleagues so I would have at least one “friend” a key Facebook term, and invited Terry to join as well.

We built a Group on FaceBook for PSVillage - it’s just a sample but you can join Facebook and then join PSVillage to see what it could offer. You can see all the members and you can send messages or “poke” them. Announcements and photos can be posted, pretty much what you’d expect.

But the bigger value in Facebook is the general linking of people together and seeing updates from your friend on your home page. So for example my colleague with whom I talk several times a day, updates his “status” and I see that on my home page. Terry mentioned that CEO who had his company join Facebook and that’s how they stay in touch on the road by updating their Facebook status and they have a private group that they can post more detailed information to. I have all of 11 friends on Facebook so far but I am finding it increasingly interesting to check out my homepage each day to see what others have posted to theirs - I don’t have to go looking for this info; it’s all right on my home page.

We also built a Cause on Facebook, for the PSVillage sponsored charity “Schools for Humanity”. This very interesting because it will allow us to grow the awareness of this valuable work by inviting our friends to join, very similar to LinkedIn. Once you “Join the Cause” then any updates to the Cause appear on your home page so you stay informed. And you can recruit others. They have a “Hall of Fame” for the people who have donated the most, and recruited the most new members. My daughter is currently beating us all by having recruited 13 people in just a few days. And that’s only because Facebook limits you to 20 new invites a day. So she’s just begun to work her way thru her 300 contacts. We expect this will be a good way to spread the word and a complementary communication channel to the Schools for Humanity website.

Oh, and I also found a few other amusing things. I added the LinkedIn application so I can see my LinkedIn contacts within Facebook. I added a Warren Buffet quote generator (today’s is “if history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians"). You can see this and more if you join Facebook and send me an invite to be your friend. The only real downside I’ve discovered so far is how to explain to my daughter that it’s not my fault her friends keep sending me facebook invites because of our new connection thru Schools for Humanity.

Anyone else out there looking to use Facebook in the business world? I’d be interested in hearing about your experiences.

Thanks,

Beth