I must admit that while Facebook has mostly been about friends and personal relationships, I have been surprised at the number of professional and business contacts wanting to add me as a friend on Facebook ever since it opened up its platform. It will be interesting to see how these two services grow, how the boundary between friend and professional contact continues to blur for the professional, and whether Facebook makes a concerted effort to enter into LinkedIn’s turf. For example, why couldn’t I maintain one profile on Facebook and only share the professional information with those in that network and the personal with those in another.
The comments on the post have been interesting too:
(One) An easy way to transfer information from Facebook to Linkedin, or vice versa, would be great. I’ve noticed that Facebook users have been more hesitant to start using Linkedin because they want to know what they would do on LInkedin. Reducing the time it takes to create and maintain a professional profile, on either Linked or Facebook, would be great for early/mid twenty somethings.
(Two) Just as most people have a work email and a personal email (at a minimum). There is the same church & state separation for people b/w hyper-social (facebook/myspace) and business-based networking… I would not want to aggregate my facebook and linked in accounts, because I don’t think pictures of me in a funny hat or pictures of my pet is appropriate for linked-in type networking.
And the most insightful (and succinct)
Ed, great series of comments. See my post about some thoughts that I have about the two services — especially on the differences between what people think of as “friends” or “links”