Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Facebook is a social networking application. Unless you are a teen who tries to show off your 100+ social networks or a business person who tries to profit from the latest social networking trend, Facebook seems to be a waste of time. After playing with the service for two days, I conclude that while excessive use of Facebook can be a tremendous drain on time, but if the usage time is managed well, Facebook is a valuable tool for maintaining healthy social networks that otherwise is difficult to do in the physical world.

I was an anti-Facebook person. I used believe that for a great part of my life I was able to maintain my social networks without tools like Facebook and MySpace, there is simply no good reasons to use them. This thought is no longer valid.

Here are some reasons why people should consider using Facebook:

1. Interact with friends who you don’t see often. I have different groups of friends who live in different parts of the world. It’s close to impossible to communicate with every one of them on a weekly basis. I simply don’t have time to write friends letters, emails, send postcards or call them. Facebook allows me to send short messages and photos to friends in seconds. That’s time saving — productivity increased.
2. Gain new competitive advantages. How valuable you are to your work is based on how much you can contribute. You can’t make effective contribution if you lack knowledge about what the current and the future trend. Especially, this is important if you are in the field of web information technology. Not that Facebook is the only thing that is going in the world today (though my teen cousin does believe that), but it’s an important part of today’s culture, and it has great influence in the technology and business world. Know how Facebook works will only give you new competitive advantages over others who know nothing about it.
3. Learn by playing. Facebook is a rich platform, full with interesting ideas and fun to use. Because people can create custom applications, new features are added everyday. How we social in the physical world is quite different from how we social in the virtual world. In Facebook, you can learn about those differences. Subsequently, it could change the way you think about and manage your personal information and social relations. For example, do you really want to share your birthday information and party photos with everyone you meet?

Facebook and other social networking applications are not only for teens, but tools that help people to build relationships and maintain healthy social networks. If you are in the information technology field, you can benefit professionally by learning how social networking applications work and why many people are crazy them.