Content Matters

As I’ve previously written, one of the obstacles to using Facebook for business purposes is that there’s only one class of friend.  If I wish to link to another Facebook user, I become their Friend.  There’s no way to differentiate between whether it’s a personal friend, a co-worker, a client or a partner.

With a network that has one primary purpose, such as LinkedIn, that’s not an issue.  In LinkedIn, I link to people who have some level of business relationship and I only expose business-related information to them.  My LinkedIn profile is strictly business, so there’s no issue.

My Facebook page includes much more varied information, including music and entertainment details.  Do I want to share those with my friends?  Sure.  With my clients?  Perhaps but maybe not.

According to Steve O’Hear, at ZDNet, Facebook is ready to launch a new feature which will allow users to organize friends into groups, with various levels of privacy for each.  In other words, I should soon be able to organize my Facebook page so that I can decide which apps should be accessible by which types of “friends”.  This will be a big improvement for Facebook and should move them closer to becoming relevant for the business world.

I’d like to see two steps follow:

First, in conjunction with these groups, Facebook should allow third parties to build apps that allow users to define the categories of friends.    This would allow the development of vertical market solutions on the Facebook platform.  For example, in the pharma industry, you might want to define a relationship between a pharmaceutical sales rep and a physician; in the government affairs market, a relationship between people at organizations who support the same issue; in software, a relationship between people who team on a business development opportunity, etc.  The nuances of those relationships are not supported by the current options in Facebook.

The second request is more trivial.  Let’s come up with a better word than “friend”.  I have professional relationships with many people in business, and the term friend just doesn’t seem to fit.  If we insist on referring to these relationships as “friends”, I think we’ll have to change the name of a business meeting to a “play date”.