August 9th, 2007
Couldn't enterprises outsource their internal white pages to FaceBook?
I broke down yesterday morning. After receiving only a limited number of e-mail invitations to join the FaceBook networks of others (and then resisting the viral temptation), Redmonk’s James Governor wore me down and got me to join saying it would be good for the next version of Mashup Camp that we’re running at Trinity College in Dubin, Ireland starting on September 10. Somehow, I’m supposed to add this information to FaceBook. I haven’t quite figured out how to do that. I’m glad I joined.
Although I’m far from the first one to notice this, I’m far more impressed with the way the FaceBook’s user interface works than the way LinkedIn’s does and here’s why. Many companies these days have an internal Web-based directory of their employees. My employer CNET Network has one of these and I use it all the time to look up things like the cell phone numbers, alternate e-mail addresses, and IM IDs of my colleagues.
One of the first things I noticed in FaceBook was how easy it would be for CNET Networks to actually shut down this internal directory that it runs and outsource it to FaceBook. That’s simply not so with LinkedIn, or at least that application for it never occurred to me (and maybe it’s a good test for LinkedIn and others to think about for their next revs).
Based on the domain part (the part that comes after the @ sign) of the e-mail addresses of FaceBook’s members, it appears to intuit connections and forms sub-networks of people. Within seconds of joining FaceBook, I was connected to FaceBook’s sub-network for CNET employees (732 of my co-workers are enlisted) all of whom can see the data like phone numbers that I’d want them to see (but others can’t). Much of the same information is available for my LinkedIn contacts, but it feels much harder to get to. It’s almost as if LinkedIn would much rather you use LinkedIn’s tools for contacting your contacts than your own. Forced intermediaryship has doomed many companies. After playing with FaceBook for a few minutes, my first thought was, this is way better than the information that’s available through CNET”s own on-line directory. That thought simply never occurred to me with LinkedIn.
As good as FaceBook is at networking business people, its roots in consumerville are still quite apparent. For example, at that one moment where one FaceBook user accepts the invitation to be a part of another FaceBook user’s network, the first user is given a pick list from which to select the context that best describes his or her connection to the second user (see partial screen shot).
Beyond the highly generic “Worked together,” there are no other business contexts (most, like “We hooked up” are much more social in nature). For example, when issuing an invitation on LinkedIn, one choice you get is “ (We’ve done business together)” which is slightly different than the co-worker context of “Worked together.” There could be others like “Is a customer” or “Is a supplier.”
