Facebook for companies – open or closed?
November 30, 2007I’ve been checking out Facebook to see how many companies I know have networks on Facebook. To my surprise, quite a few exist. To my greater surprise, some are open to anyone who wants to join in spite of the message being "for employees of…"; I actually joined a couple of them with no problem.
I wonder how many companies are aware of their own presence on Facebook? Like the Wikipedia, some may not yet have discovered they have a page. The era of "shared communication" (Thanks, Anthony) is getting stronger every day.
I suspect most Facebook communities will not last long. I’m speaking at Online Information in London next week. There is a Facebook page for the conference
and speakers are invited to post something about themselves or their
talks. I just did so, but imagine that once the conference is over, the
page will not live. Also, if most speakers do not post anything, it
will end up being just one more marketing gimmick.
Check out Toby Ward’s article "speaking of Facebook as an underground intranet" for a good review of the situation:
I quote Toby: I’m a big fan of Facebook, but it poses some serious security and privacy concerns for more than just individuals. Corporate IT and Security officials would do well to not only monitor Facebook activity, but to intimately know and understand the types of applications being used and developed for the Facebook community.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Interesting post. You mentioned you joined several company ‘networks’. Are you sure you don’t misunderstand the concept of network, and actually joined ‘groups’? Networks are related to a domain name: ibm.com, microsoft.com. You could hardly join those, as you’re not an employee of these companies. However, I do agree several company groups exist. I have personally created the ‘3DS’ group as an open group. After a short period of uncontrolled growth, I have setup new rules: 2 admins per geo, and a ‘clos’ group policy, in order to control who joins, and for what purpose… Actually, I would rather have created a 3DS network, but networks have to be agreed by Facebook, and they are not very reactive at this stage…
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Thank you for this correction Hervé. You are absolutely right. Your example of a closed company group is a step in the right direction. Too bad Facebook is slow on networks. Could it be because there might be less visibility and therefore less advertising for them? What do you think?
December 13th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Jane, the notion of “shared communication” would not exist if it couldn’t be shared…
Nice post by the way.