George Costanza could have been talking about Facebook when he said "Anybody knows... You gotta keep your worlds apart!" Facebook facilitates the collision of worlds. There are good reasons to maintain walls between professional and personal networks -- but Facebook's whole purpose is to remove barriers, the opposite of what you sometimes (wisely) want. Don't get me wrong. Facebook is great fun. But is it a work tool? I don't think so.

While I applaud you for entering the Facebook generation, expecting Facebook to support your business goals is missing the point. It's a tool for building and maintaining relationships.

Facebook helps me stay connected by giving me a sense of what my friends and colleagues are up to, without me having to actively contact them and check in. It's still a broadcast model - push your messages out, and connect with interested people. That's it. It's a lot more one-way than it looks. I limit my "friends" to people I've met, in person or through virtual communities.

If you want to get suggestions on content for your blog or podcast, go where people are actively discussing content related to yours and ask them in that forum. Talking to a general audience is going to get a very general response, and you should set your expectations appropriately.

The best thing I've learned from this article is how to add value to a Facebook friend's life, and therefore to one's FB friendship with them: be meaningful in a good old-fashioned way. Say something of value, not just something nice.

How to talk to a friend one has added, but whom one considers too important or too busy a person to bother? It's interesting how that question leads to just the wrong conclusions: offering inanities instead of a wiser contribution to the relationship.

It seems that this is a matter of a new etiquette that will ultimately emerge in social networks. Facebook nearly died in Dec 2007 from an application invites overload. But they quickly learned, and the matter was taken care of - organically. People developed programs and applications to reject all invites, Facebook instituted tighter controls, and friends asked friends to behave. Social networks learn.

It is also a matter of how quickly the participants in the social network learn that this mechanism is self-directed. I choose to reject all random application invites, for instance, even if I am tempted to know what flower someone thought I am. The result? An initial sense of being left out of a circle of mutual admiration or blood-sucking [ref: the Vampire app] - and now a profile that makes me feel like it's the home office I'd like to have: with a bookshelf, art, curious items, and a place to talk.

It's about letting people know & learn how you want to be treated by first treating them likewise. Establish the rules of behavior, and assert them.

In that way, the social network is not just a fancy contact list - it is at once an evolving consciousness, and an observation of the same.

Emma,

Thanks for your insightful comment. You make some very good points, especially about soliciting content ideas. It seems to me, though, that there's a fundamental disconnect in here somewhere when it comes to the "colleagues" piece of the equation. When I connect to a work colleague, I expect to be able to follow them from a professional perspective. But pretty much all I get are updates on their personal lives. Even from a simple networking point of view, there's just no value in that -- at least not to me.

Paul

Wow, Paul - so sorry to hear your experience with Facebook and Twitter didn't bear fruit for you. I can understand though; using social media for solid business purposes is not obvious.

Thing is, there are numerous professionals generating significant results from participating in these sites. Results such as an increase in traffic, more subscribers, more product sales, speaking engagements, media appearances, and -yes- top paying clients. I know, this has all happened for me and continues to do so.

This especially caught my eye:

"I've attempted to use my Facebook presence to promote cool new features on HarvardBusiness.org, to recruit bloggers, to solicit new ideas, to drive traffic to columns I've written, even to connect to my now semi-dormant Twitter account. The result? Nada."

There's definitely an art and a science to using social media effectively. It can take time to see real results. But the key factor is it's all about the relationships, adding value, being a thought leader, helping others with no agenda.

Essentially, the outdated saying "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" has been replaced with "build a friendlier path and people will find your door."

I hope we can turn you into a Facebook fanatic before long! :)

Cheers,
Mari
@marismith

Mari,

Thanks for your great comment. I hope the post didn't come off as a wholesale condemnation of Facebook as a business tool. I'm certainly aware of how powerful a platform Facebook and other social applications have proven to be for many organizations. My POV is that I haven't reaped any individual professional benefits from being on Facebook. And the discomfort I feel at the collision of my personal and professional lives outweighs what I see as the potential upside for me.

That said, I'm ready to be convinced otherwise.

Best,
Paul

Paul,

Facebook allows one to make lists of their friends, say three big groups of personal, professional, and public. One can then tweak their privacy settings so that whole profile areas are not available to a certain group - public in your case. Notes and Wall are two of the things you can hide. It is one of the subtler features I only recently used in a similarly desperate Search for Facebook Meaning.

On the News Feed page, the Preferences can be changed so that other people's dramas and pets are not disrupting our attention. It's about picking and choosing, and Facebook seems to have an uncanny sixth sense about what its population wants at a certain point. (Which isn't to say Facebook has it all.) I tweaked my News Feed lately to chuck out life drama updates and inane photos. I identified people who were most annoying for my mismatch with their tastes, and simply chose to get lesser of their feed - and more of business contacts' feed. The result: a dramatic restoration of energy.

It's a world where stated rules don't get things done, but rather our survival and adaptation instincts establish the rules.

Thanks, Paul.

Gosh, I do hear what you say. Your POV is shared by many fellow professionals!!

Just this morning a gal from my Twitter network mentioned she deleted her Facebook account out of sheer frustration a while back and asked me if it was worthwhile coming back now. ;)

Re the collision of personal/professional, I wrote a blog post about that not long back. And, whereas I see the lines are for sure blurry, I make a third distinction and that is our private lives.

I encourage my students and clients to never write anything online they wouldn't want to have their kids read in ten years' time... or be pasted on a prominent newspaper!

...looking forward to connecting with you on Facebook if possible. ;)

Cheers,
Mari

I really know what you mean.

Being a recent graduate, and having started my own company, I have made very valuable connections in my area and thought what better way than to add them to facebook to keep in touch.

What a big mistake.

My worlds clashed when inappropriate messages from still-beer-soaked friends would pop up on my wall and my valued networking contacts would be able to view them. I am very familiar with the nuances of 'keeping your worlds apart'.

I'm not a fan of limiting people's accessibilities, so little by little I censor the messages, but its more of a reactive approach than a proactive one.

Perhaps facebook will realize this and start offering multiple pages for different assortments of contacts (as opposed to privacy settings).

Good morning! Did you ever think about maybe having two Facebook accounts; one for personal and one for professional use? Then you can refer your selected personal contacts to your professional Facebook account and vice versa. Just a thought!!! It's worked for me on other occasions.

Thanks,
Reba

Paul,

The closest comparison I can make is to water cooler talk. What did you do over the weekend? How are your kids? What have you been up to lately? These are the kinds of conversations we have with our professional colleagues that allow us to connect, build relationships, and work together.

Given that, I did made a conscious choice not to make my Facebook page too personal. I'm connected to both friends and professional colleagues, and I work for the Federal Government. Therefore, I do not express religious or political views in that forum, nor anything too off the wall. Is it something I'd share at the water cooler? Then it's OK. I'm not going to post pictures of myself half-naked with a hangover.

I also noticed a difference in culture between Facebook and LinkedIn. With LinkedIn, you make connections with colleagues, and there's little expectation that they will continue to interact with you - little burden. With Facebook, the level of participation expected is much higher. That took some getting used to. If the connection with a professional contact is tenuous, I probably wouldn't add them - why would they care what I did over the weekend?

As some of the other posters said, there's a certain responsibility we have to take control over our online environment - choosing what we want others to see, who we friend, what conversations we have, and where. These choices allow us to receive greater benefit from what social networking has to offer.

I've found Facebook to be of benefit to me in maintaining my network of friends and colleagues. In fact, while writing this comment I received an email from someone who'd been reading my Facebook updates and wanted to ask me a work question. I've done the same, myself - contacting someone I knew better through Facebook than I do in real life, and gotten a very useful response. In my experience, it's the networking on the site that leads to offline conversations that directly support my professional work. (I don't expect the actual conversation to happen in Facebook). That goes back to the point of the article you referenced at the start of this essay - connecting to people in virtual communities enables connecting in real life, which leads to real work being done.

I enjoyed this discussion! Thanks for the article.

Emma

That's why they call them "social networks" not "business networks." Your expectation that Facebook would bring you business is sadly clueless. It's about the fluff. Soccer moms twittering about gas prices, etc. Silly, pointless, content free. You got that part right '-)

I work for a chamber of commerce, and Facebook has been useful to me in a business sense. Employees of chamber-member companies are able to find me easily and contact me quickly, with questions, thoughts, or requests they might not bring themselves to call me about. It's not that they're chicken, it's just that social networks are so conducive to that sort of contact.

I do imagine it is different for a media person looking for specific feedback, input, or content toward current projects. Facebook is not a mechanism for traditional market research, or a way of fostering a submission pool. But when I see someone in person with whom I'm friends on Facebook, you can bet we have good things to talk about. And I don't have to worry about keeping track of their current e-mail address or employer--all I need to do is contact them through Facebook and we're in touch.

And by the way, I found this article because I follow HarvardBiz on Twitter. And look, I commented with something of substance!

I am so glad I am NOT the only one getting out of the Facebook "world"...it is completely useless.

I think I get away with blurring the worlds by working in advertising but I can say that I get very limited business use out of it. Often others will send me applications from brands to review but it hasn't gone beyond that.

Paul,

I'll be sure to add you as a friend tonight! Great article.

Facebook is just getting started and has room for new graphics and digital uploads along the path. Web 2.0 is a mix of personal and business, and it is a lot like the mix of the PC and the office of years past. That is a wining formula given time.

Hi,

For me Facebook, has brought new meaning to being connected, its soley up to you to keep it professional or personal. Facebook, has given me the opportunity to connect with other library professionals, to engage in dialogs with them, effortlessly and seamlessly. There are many professional librarian groups set up, all engaged in many relevant discussion about the profession, and anyone from any part of the world could participate. That makes it a brilliant way to understand the differences between these professionals from different nations, without having to wait for a publication or conference to be held.

Facebook is a social utility that has made it possible for librarians to engage with users, and this has been a great way to reach out to students.

I've had comments from my college students who doing their degree and masters programmes, that it is "cool to see the college librarian on the facebook" There is a preset notion about librarians, which I believe Facebook will enable us to prove wrong. There are students who are not comfortable with face to face conversation, this is a great way to engage them.

Libraries and LIbrarians are all exploring ways and means to make best use of Facebook as an instructional media.

In simple terms I think it is a great tool.

I am a new facebook 'recruit'. Surprisingly, I find it a bit intrusive: I am usually outgoing and confident. However, am uncomfortable with everyone knowing what I am doing this exact moment and perhaps wary of expressing my thoughts to ‘friends’ which comprise grad school classmates, high school friends, my spouse, acquaintances, family...its an endless kaleidoscope of relationships with people who certainly have different views of me and to whom I present myself accordingly...

Still, my shyness is laughable, considering that I desperately want to be a blogger...

After paying to be on Ecademy and deriving no value, personally or professionally, I decided to join Facebook as part of a strategy to develop a client base for information products on starting a business. I went from 25 real friends to now almost 1,600 in 3 months and with minimal effort; I am able to ask questions and get answers on the practical aspects of internet and social marketing; I have met some of my Facebook friends with similar academic and professional backgrounds and business objectives to my own and we are examining the possibility of partnering on teleclasses etc. I think if you set yourself a clear strategy then you can make Facebook work for you.

For real business associates and colleagues I use LinkedIn and only link with people I have met and respect - probably why I only have 106 contacts - quality over quantity !.

Gillian Pritchett, MA. CPFA.
www.gspinsights.com

Thanks, everyone, for the very insightful comments. There's an interesting range of opinion here, from those -- like me -- who haven't been able to derive much professional benefit from their Facebook pages to those who quite clearly have. There certainly seems to be an effort required to make Facebook work for you -- nothing wrong with that -- but I wonder if it's more than that. I wonder if you simply have to be in the right circumstance to find Facebook to be useful from a professional perspective. Maybe it's not just a question of being clever about how you use Facebook but also who you are and what you do "for a living." I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

And, by the way, thanks to the people who have made Facebook friend requests as a result of this post. Needless to say, I'm on the horns of a dilemma on how to respond.

There are pros and cons of using facebook for professional networking. I made a conscious decision early on to limit my facebook friends to actual friends. I do have some work colleagues on there, but only those I have some sort of social connection to. For my professional life, I use LinkedIn, which I find much more useful for business networking. I particularly like the Q&A section.

That being said, I work in the corporate arena. My partner, on the other hand, works in the music industry where the line between business and social is far more blurred. In this context, facebook actually serves both purposes but one needs to carefully consider what privacy settings to use.

The problem is not Facebook - it's the difference between 'Chat and Change' between 'Rant and Results'. Until we exchange our thoughts in 'Collaboration on Purpose' the social circles will engage us in unrelated conversations that create no perceptable value toward our mutual pleasure - or our mutual survival.

Just like in real life, our virtual world can become a multi-faceted platform for entertainment, social, business, charitable, and earth-changing involvement.

I do think it is possible to unravel the value in threaded conversations. But we will have to change the structure and then identify the purpose(s) for each of the conversations in which we participate. We will need to decide what it is we want to ask for, and change the platform so we can ASK4 that result, on purpose, in tandem. That will empower us to share similar interests and create interesting and sustainable results, cooperatively. Dare to participate? (http://unettednations.wordpress.com/ask4_is/)

I do agree with the observations. I for one joined for purely personal reasons ie hooking up with friends around the world but now I find it becomes addictive.

Every day and throughout the day I want to see whats going on with who and why.

It then reduces my business productivity and often it becomes a popularity gauge, beauty pageant and gossip mill among other things. I know I am being a bit extreme.

I closed down my Hi5 and myspace pages months ago for the same reasons and now I am thinking of not just defriending people but actually just closing my account.

It could be a question of discipline. SO for those of us to who lack internal walls we need external ones.

Facebook is a great application when you harness the power properly for promotion and acceptance of business product or campaign; as a business networking tool LinkedIn is what you want.

I personally ditched Facebook because it was too time-consuming, considering the ROI. Old acquaintances can get my contact info on Google in 5 seconds.

I use LinkedIn the way you seem to have set out to use Facebook: for networking, and for branding and marketing yourself as a professional online. (I don't use it to drive traffic, though I've seen it done well).

But Twitter is the secret sauce. LinkedIn is the talk, Twitter is the walk -- it answers the question: how interesting (to me) are you, really?

Paul,

Have you tried to use any other social sites for professional purposes? I recommend to look into SEARCHLES.COM. It's totally worth to look out for it's development. It doesn't have millions of users as facebook has right now, but people that are joining it are truly the ones that pursue the goal of exchanging content rather than personal life updates. It would be nice to have you joined and hopeflly very soon you find people of your interest on the site platform.

Hi Paul,

The value of any relationship is in the reciprocity between the parties. The fact that you can call Joe Public a friend is evidence that Joe calls you a friend; if Joe didn't call you a friend, why would you call him one?

Why does it matter if you have a mutual relationship with 500 people but only engage in "exclusive personal correspondence" with 10 percent? Moreover, if Ellie Mirman is correct and social media implies transparency and authenticity, who are you not to blur the line between business client and drinking buddy when it happens all the time?

Have you never hosted a social gathering and invited co-workers and colleagues? Or is your issue with those co-workers who don't return the favor? What about friends who ask for your business expertise but never show you pictures of their kids?

If you want to "correspond" with people online, use the telephone, postal mail, or e-mail. The fact you set up social media profiles in the first place is proof you want more than just a few words flowing across a screen but you want a deeper relationship. I therefore ask you why it's so necessary to cut your cake and eat it too when your former high school buddy could hold the cake, your business partner could hold the fork, and your sister could feed you.

hi john,
Its really frustrating going to facebook and looking for professionally alighned allies, i think you can go to Fanbox and of course you will get professionals that wanted to socialize and you know sometimes you can get involved intellectually, please be my friend Ernestnnagbo@fanbox.com
ernest

I couldn't agree with the author more. Initially I was very keen to create my login on FB. But eventually it became more and more of just loads of 'unuseful' professional info. Don't get me wrong, I dont mind knowing what my so and so's did last week. With today's world we hardly have time to connect with our family. There's is always that friendly third party webmail that does the job done for me. Call me old fashion!

I wonder when some formal government procurement will be tanked because of an allegation of untoward (social networking) contact between a vendor and a government official on ... Facebook. Subpoenas, etc. And we know from the Google/Viacom suit that everything from (copyright..."n-right") trumps privacy. Good luck to us all!

Mr. Michelman,

Thank you for doing your show, it is one of my favorite casts around. I listen to your show every week and did hear that you have a Facebook page - so I went to friend you, and never got a response.

I never wanted a Facebook page but was forced into it by friends and family. After getting used to it, I find it useful to connect with friends, family and people of like interested - you do however have to do the work.

I notice that you only have about 50 or so friends currently and you do not have a Fan Page setup for the Idea Cast. Why is that?

I think if you added more friends, especially fans, to a fan group for your profile (like someone suggested above) then you would start to see more benefit.

Also setting up a Fan Page would be great because you could post show link backs and your fans (on Facebook) could comment and you could send out updates. I am a Fan Of many things on facebook and I like getting updates about topics that interest me.

So in short - I do hope that you reconsider your facebook abandonment. With a little tweaking of your friend list and maybe a fan page - you should start to see some results!

Paul said:

"I wonder if you simply have to be in the right circumstance to find Facebook to be useful from a professional perspective. Maybe it's not just a question of being clever about how you use Facebook but also who you are and what you do "for a living.""

Amen. As director of an alumni association, I have a professional responsibility to help alumni activate their connections with other alumni. That's literally my job (on some level). So of course I'm on FB, creating Groups, managing Pages, connecting others' info with people who need/want it, etc. But then I get connected to my personal/private friends and family and voila - the worlds collide. I keep waiting for more FB-driven/hosted tools for keeping friend-family-work worlds compartmentalized. I don't think FB is that useful outside my job, but INSIDE my job, it's critical.

I am about to turn 52 years old and am hardly a recent grad, but I have found Facebook to be a very useful tool both personally and professionally.

I originally joined because one of my friends was a candidate for high office, I was volunteering for his campaign, and I was interested in the potential for political organizing that Facebook represented (which, incidentally, is enormous and only beginning to be tapped). As I got into it I found it to be a great tool for keeping in touch with more and more of my colleagues (I work for a Fortune 200 company with offices all over the world and a lively culture) as well as my classmates from college, law school, and even high school! (YEAH CLASS OF '73!)

Through Facebook I've learned that a former assistant of mine is going through a divorce, learned that a friend in another country had been hospitalized with a sudden and alarming illness, and joined in online mourning for a very young team member (29) who died suddenly in Europe just a few weeks ago. These are people I care about and I am grateful to have access to this news about them so I can act on it in a way I consider appropriate. I use Facebook to share news items, blog postings, and even cartoons of interest, and it is not a secret to anyone who knows me that I am an active Democrat who reads widely, so I sincerely doubt I have shocked anyone with any of that content (except perhaps a high school boyfriend who now says his political views are "Conservative"). If I were closeted (gay, Republican, whatever) I might feel differently. But I'm not, and I don't.

I have a LinkedIn account too, which I seldom look at except when I get an email to advise me that a person I've never met or had any previous contact with wants to tell me that he considers me "a person I trust" and would like to add me to his network. I DON'T THINK SO.

I'm not an entrepreneur and if I were, I certainly wouldn't rely on Facebook to generate enough business to keep me going. But in my judgment you are wrong to dismiss it as a business tool.

Just my $0.02 ...

My Facebook presence is all professional, although it has connected me to some personal friends. I am careful about who I accept as friends AND tweak the privacy settings -- so I don't run into the some of problems you describe above. But the issue you're talking about the need for more granular social networks. (see this slideshow for more about that
http://www.slideshare.net/charleneli/the-future-of-social-networks/

With that said, I've actually gotten some value from it for my professional work. Here's how:

* I write a blog with over 3,000 subscribers on a niche topic - how nonprofits can use social media. I included a link to my facebook profile and encourage readers to "friend me." This has given me a great way to connect and to know my readers better - which in turn has helped me discover topics for my blog, improved my reading, and enhanced my ability to find stories, sources, and resources that help the writing process.

* I work as a consultant and trainer -- how nonprofits can use social media for social change. I use my Facebook status line to let people know what I am researching or need examples of ... this way when I have to research a presentation - I am finding I don't need to "seek out" or do a lot of search. I get really excellent leads and pointers very quickly.

* I write articles for various publications. I used the "note" feature on Facebook and tagged people to do a little focus group related to my topic. This helped me generate this article:
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page8075.cfm

* I done a lot of fundraising for Cambodian orphans on behalf of a nonprofit organization as a board member. While it is a personal interest and I do it as a volunteer, it relates to my professional consulting work on how nonprofits can use social media. My Facebook profile has helped me connect with people who are interested in working with me and contributing to my cause.

I try also to be efficient as possible and use the GTD applications -
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/04/nptech-tag-summ.html

Initially Facebook was fun. Then many (MANY) applications (and friends... and acquaintances and relatives and ex-colleagues and colleagues) added later, it's total mayhem! Then suddenly I realised that there are some information - that I wanted some "friends" to know and some "friends" not to know - that EVERYONE knew, AND surprised me by telling me "hey, so now you're working for XYZ?". My first reaction was, "how do u know?!" - their reply "Facebook", of which I have to make a mental reminder not to put too much details in there! So strictly, my Facebook account is for personal connections, with only information I want people (aka the public) to know revealed - I still treasure my personal privacy afterall! I've also tidied up all the applications and have become more selective with what I want on my profile, sifting out all the "noise". Silly questionnaires like "which cartoon character are you?" are out, so are applications that involve "biting" and "chopping".

I try to accept only applications that add "value" to my profile. Through the applications that we add to our Facebook profile, slowly and interestingly, our character/personality starts to show through.