Should you be using Facebook to shmooze online? If you’re in management or above, perhaps you should think twice before participating. According to Simon Dumenco at Portfolio, something about the social-networking site makes executives squirm. He points out that Bill Gates went cold-turkey on his half-hour-a-day Facebook habit, partly to escape his 8,000-plus daily “friend” requests, but also because he was encountering weird fan sites that, presumably, creeped him out.
There are other drawbacks for serious business folk thinking about networking via Facebook. First of all, it’s nearly impossible to remove all traces of yourself from the social-networking site, even if you deactivate your account or request it be removed in its entirety. Then there’s the triple threat of potential legal liability, disclosure of personal information, and the risk of leaking corporate secrets. And in reality, not many executives actually use Facebook anyway, with many preferring more professionally oriented sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo.
Dumenco sums it up this way:
Facebook is simply unserious – particularly given how it prompts hard-driving business executives to regress into adolescent vernacular. “Poking” people, requesting “friends,” writing on someone’s “wall”: It’s cute when you’re in high school or college. But in a corporate environment, it sounds disingenuous and downright silly.
