I left Facebook

At last, after hesitating for a longtime, I deactivated my Facebook account. They asked why and I chose the answer "I don't find it useful".

Are you still on Facebook? Do you find it useful?

Comments

[steve]

Are you still on Facebook?

Yes, but rarely use so essentially inactive

Do you find it useful?

No

[Samuel]

I still use Facebook, but as you can see on my page I find it hard to find a good use for it too. I'm not stopping yet though. I want to keep to understand the companies that use Facebook as their intranet.

[Jane]

So, you two don't seem to find Facebook useful, but stay on "just in case" in order to understand why companies use it?
That's valid.
Could someone else maybe speak up about how they are using it (or similar) in their company or organisation? Instinctively I feel it has a strong role to play inside organisations.

[Geoff Garcia]

I work at the March of Dimes and we have several face book pages for our volunteers to feel part of a group and exchange information. Our national youth group uses it quite extensively.

Can you make money for your company on it?
-unlikely

Is it a good marketing tool?
-possibly for a non-profit company looking to raise awareness

Is there a reason to use it on a personal level for keep tabs on friends?
-without a doubt

Within our organization there is little room for facebook itself, although some of its features (activity streams, comment walls, RSS feeds on everything, photo/file sharing, blogs, etc) are part of the portal product we use: Oracle WebCenter Interaction - which is the old BEA ALUI/Plumtree portal.

Here are the links to the various MOD sites, but you could just use the search tool and find them also.

Main site:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2211694473&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fq%3Dmarch%2Bof%2Bdimes%26init%3Dq

MOD Youth Site:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204636622&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fq%3Dmarch%2Bof%2Bdimes%26init%3Dq

Second site:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/March-of-Dimes/20876805343?ref=s&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fq%3Dmarch%2Bof%2Bdimes%26init%3Dq

[Nic Price]

When I leave it will be because they lost scrabulous!

Seriously though, several old friends who I had lost touch with have been in touch and I think that's why I can't quite break the ties that bind. It's not that it's the only way to find people you may know, but they make it pretty easy.

Corporately, in client companies I've been talking to over the last year, a high percentage of employees use Facebook and have a mixture of work and social "friends" listed. They tend to use it for local work social events. It's another channel, and more convenient than the intranet or work email as it's not constrained by the firewall.

And although they're not using it specifically for work, the social side is vital to the well-being of employees, and I haven't come across too many managers who mind. In fact many of them use it too.

As someone who used to smoke, I see "Facebook as the new Fag Break"!

The best conversations were often those had taking a 5 minute cigarette break with colleagues who I didn't sit next to or have direct dealings with.

And it definitely helped the company in terms of communications.

I even had a non-smoker in my team who had cottoned on to this and used to join us as well :-)

[Cyril Druesne]

L'inscription à certains groupes, la connexion à certains utilisateurs permet d'être averti de certains événements intéressants.

En outre, Facebook a quand même progressé sur bien des points : meilleure ergonomie, intégration de services tiers (Delicious, Flickr, flux RSS, …)

Facebook peut être un relais intéressant pour un site Web, une marque :
• possibilité de créer une page « fans » de sa marque, de son produit, de son site, et donc d'être en relation directe avec des amateurs et utilisateurs.
• possibilité de synchroniser son statut avec Twitter par exemple : on peut donc diffuser de courtes informations sans que certains aient la moindre idée de ce qu'est le microblogging.

Je pense qu'il possible de compenser la vacuité inhérente à Facebook en gérant avec rigueur, professionnalisme son profil et les pages « fan ».

Bien utilisé, je pense même que cet un outil intéressant pour développer le traffic d'un site Web, et, dans certains cas, rajeunir un peu son lectorat.