Secrets Your Parents Never Told You About Facebook
When you stop and think about it for a minute, Facebook is an incredible phenomenon. You can “put yourself out there”, letting people know who you are (or how you want to be perceived), you likes and dislikes, your beliefs, and anything else you want to communicate.
Arguably, Facebook has transformed the world by allowing free and open (for the most part) communication at will.
One way to think of Facebook is as a giant bulletin board, where you can post whatever you want. Options allow you to specify who can see what you post. Because the volume of information would be overwhelming, if you had more than a few friends, Facebook uses some intelligence to determine what shows up on your wall (your “place” on Facebook). You can use options to let Facebook know what your preferences in this area.
But What Is Facebook Good For?
But is Facebook really nothing more than frivolous posts of cute cats, weddings and baby pictures, insipidly stupid MEMEs and political postings?
Well, in fact, Facebook is very valuable – for social networking among individuals. While there are social media platforms which have better technology, nothing beats the global reach of Facebook. You can make friends and communicate with literally almost anyone on the planet. In fact, Facebook is even developing solar power drone technology that will bring internet to even the most remote locations. This will connect everyone on the planet, if they desire, to one big social network.
Some of the things you can do with Facebook include:
- You can promote yourself to your friends and relatives, and even the whole world, as much or as little as you desire.
- It’s easy to remain connected to friends, regardless if they are clear across the planet or next door.
- You can find old friends and remain connected to them.
Is Facebook Good For Business?
Personally, I have not found Facebook to be very useful for direct business purposes. I am sure some business have success with their advertising model, but I haven’t found it to be that useful.
On the other hand, for indirect purposes Facebook can be very valuable indeed. By creating a Facebook group, for example, you can communicate with a wide variety of people on specific subjects. This allows you to spread your message to people who have indicated, by joining the group, that they have some interest.
Actors, actresses and other famous individuals find creating fan pages to be a useful way to communicate with their fans, without exposing themselves directly by friending everyone who has a crush or whatever.
Creating a page for a company allows a corporate message to be distributed to those who have indicated interest by liking the page. This can be a very valuable way for companies to communicate with those who use or are interested in their products or services.
In my opinion, Facebook is not a great medium for business communication. It should not be neglected, as it does have some utility, but LinkedIn and a corporate blog are much better methods for staying in touch with customers.
Facebook Ads
The advertisements on Facebook are so prevalent and so insipid that i find the social media platform to be almost unusable – except for AdBlock Plus. By installing this small extension into Google Chrome or Firefox, all of the ads are striped from Facebook, and moves it from wildly terrible to usable. If not for a utility such as AdBlock Plus, I would remove myself from Facebook. The ads are that annoying.
In conclusion, Facebook is a great way to stay in contact with friends, relatives, acquaintances, and fans. For business, there are better and less expensive ways to accomplish what is needed.
Have a different opinion? What is your experience with Facebook. Join the discussion below.
Richard is the Owner and Senior Writer for The Writing King, a bestselling author, and ghostwriter. He’s written and published 63 books, ghostwritten 40+ books, as well as hundreds of blog articles.
