Late last year I was at a dinner with a Board I won’t mention by name. There were roughly 50 people at the event. Tables were pre-assigned and I found myself sitting across from a chap in his mid-50′s whose professional job was an accountant. He worked at a rather large firm as a partner. And no, I won’t insert any accountant jokes at this time. About halfway through the meal, the conversation at the table of 10 shifted to social media. Other than Denise (my better half) no one really had any idea of my background or my natural propensity for all things social. Can you see where this is going? Somehow, the chatter gravitated to Facebook. Our accountant friend chimed in and said,
facebook Archive
Facebook. Love it, loathe it, like it, lambaste it … whatever your fancy, almost one billion of us are attached to it one way or another. My social media journey, like many of you, included Facebook at a time when most of us had no idea where social networking was heading. Path? Pinterest? Google+? These and many other social networking sites and applications were merely pixels of imagination back when Facebook launched. But Facebook was one of the early social networking pioneers, and as a consequence, no one originally knew what the hell they were doing with their actual social network procurement. Do I friend anyone I know? Do I accept every request that comes into my inbox? What about colleagues? Are they considered ‘friends’?
Regular readers know that I’m passionate about three key areas: leadership; learning & enterprise 2.0. As a lifelong educator, married to one as well, and possessing a young brood already immersed in a 2.0 world, we strongly believe in raising our children to be collaborative, transparent, honest and innovative. But, alas, I’ve recently developed petulance for one of the world’s finest creations … Facebook. Mr. Mark Zuckerberg has arguably founded one of the most collaborative and people connecting applications in recent history. According to CheckFacebook.com there are well over 450 million registered users worldwide. According to Google, Facebook now occupies the #1 visited website with 540 million unique visits in April, 2010 (after removing Google itself from the research). Aside from the recent Facebook privacy