A wonderful post, as always. I feel we’re at the beginning of social networking… the “Wild, Wild West!” you spoke of. The mores and standards are still sorting themselves out, errors will be made and some wonderful things will come of it too. In the end, ‘civil’ society will reign.

Personally, I look at FB as I would the physical environment… how I conduct myself in the physical, I try to replicate in the virtual. I agree with Dr. Witt, I’m turned off by the constant ‘advertising’ in posts. Just as I would want to get to know someone before doing business with them in the physical world… same thing goes in the virtual. There is a level of responsibility in how we conduct ourselves in the FB environment.

I’ve found the way people use FB, pretty much mirrors their professional relationships in the physical world. There are those who nuture relationships, and those with whom it’s simply a game of numbers.

Keep up the good work… and the great advice.

David

Right now, it’s kind of like the days of the Wild, Wild West! People are shooting from the hop and hoping to hit a target.

Regards,
~Jim

The success of sites such as Facebook, MySpace etc. is due to our(peoples) driving need to talk to teach other, about anything, and everything, and for many people, that everything includes their business.
There is a perhaps a piece missing from the various etiquette outlines. It was mentioned in posts above, that a personal contact asking for an approval of a post is one way to go, but also not enough to justify “sharing a link”.
Who is going to monitor your wall, if not you? You have delete options, you also have comment options, you can de-friend as Jim pointed out.
Yet paid for ads run in the margins of everyone’s FB page. Do we take offence at that?

It was pointed out by Dr. Witt that we have not yet approached a liveable middle ground. Where do we separate social and business activity?
What do we mean when we say we are here for networking?
We don’t separate them off-line either. Do you gather with the family and friends to watch a TV program, or a movie? We don’t jump up and yell spam every time a commercial runs (maybe we should). So why do we do it here? If this was meant to be a social site only, (social defined by whom?), then why have the blatant network marketers not been shut down? The hare, so to speak.
And what of the turtle? Are they not going to the same place? Is it ok if we move slowly instead of quickly? What exactly is being judged here?

Maybe, it would be a little simpler for all, if, there was an option to specify what sort of networking we are here for. eg. social networking vs business networking. As it is those options are not available, but it can be specified in a persons profile. If profiles are not read before responding to a friend request, what’s the point of profiling? It begs the question… What’s the point of responding?

Hugh

Mark Anthony Jenkins
Meeting Planner/Organizer
718-993-2999

Great points! The tortoise always wins the race!

Matthew

Cheers

Michele

Useful tips for myspace users. I’m new here.
So, At moment I’ve got no idea

Thanks for sharing…