Beyond Web Logs

How much time people (usually employees) spend on it, how much (company) bandwidth it consumes, how much attention it siphons off from officially sanctioned activities

Facebook, which is an excellent way to reconnect with friends from high school and childhood who you don’t get a chance to see on a regular basis.Privacy is definitely a huge concern when joining any third party online forum. When joining Facebook, I consulted with friends who have had it for years as to what I can do to control the information that is visible for other members to see.

Companies facing online reputation management challenges can use Facebook to potentially take one of the spots on the SERPS, because Facebook pages and profiles are now indexed. Anytime you can take a spot on the first page of the SERPS with any keywords about your business, it is worth the effort and leaves one less place where a naysayer can take a negative shot at your firm.

I Personally (being a Network Administrator) think it is better to leave things open and report on what activity is taking place to management. Need to be careful though, someone having Facebook open and updating status every hour is not an issue, but uploading all their photos at work and then commenting on them is a problem.

If people want to run music, then online stations should be allowed. I would actually set up a relay inside their network - not hard to do - and multicast the stream to multiple users inside the network.

I would suggest keeping the business Facebook page very clean, stay away from joining all those ridiculous groups, don’t align your company with anything controversial, or questionable, don’t even join The Office group. We actually have a client that hates the show, so you never know. I would not add flair or any of that other clutter, just keep it simple and professional as possible. Too much noise, which is frequent on Facebook pages, can distract from the true purpose of conveying the company vision and message. Also, there are many Facebook addicts that will love the fact they can find you where they spend much of their time, and if they are impressed with what they see, this will drive new traffic to your actual site.

So in short, Facebook for personal use is a colossal waste of time in my personal, yet humble opinion. Facebook for business, an excellent way to go, if it is done professionally and the focus of the profile remains squarely on your business.

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