Sep 13, 2007
Facebook and me
It’s been a few weeks since I started using Facebook.
I’m mostly enjoying the experience. I have a few friends, some from work, some from my personal life. I’ve even had a couple of surprise people contact me from my dim and distant past.
I’ve added a few applications and there are a few active groups that I have joined.
It’s not changed my life but it has got me thinking: If Facebook were my corporate portal would it do a better job? I’ve not concluded that one yet, but I am struck by the amount of effort corporate organisations have to put in to get people to use their specially built portal when Facebook gets thousands of new subscribers and active participants every day.
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Facebook is an application which requires regular interaction, this is a benefit and an issue, especially for those of us working inside the corporate firewall with logged usage. I think the question should be would a web 2.0 style profile application with the ability to build a network, combine presence, location and activity information into a stream accessible to collegues be useful? My answer would be yes to that. I think facets of facebook are useful to the enterprise and if the API allowed for enterprises to leverage just those useful elements for a fee then we may see some more openess to applications like facebook. This view must be balanced with the security concern and requirements for many enterprises to retain data on their own networks, which is where tools like the Aqualogic suite from BEA or Connections from IBM (and others) come into their own.