Facebooking the Music

Had a biz lunch with a rep at Broadway Video, which is the mac-daddy of production/ duplication/ editing companies (Ask for Mort and tell him E.B. sent you!) We were talking about social media, and Mort was saying that he needed to know more about the whole Facebook, etc., phenomenon. The reason? He personally experienced its DWOM (digital word-of-mouth) power:

He got a call from his nephew saying, "What's up with so-and-so?"
"Whaddaya mean," Mort asked.
"I read that he's in the hospital!"

Turns out, the family -- at least the younger set -- was pretty connected through Facebook, and the nephew read about the family member before anyone had a chance to call Mort! (The guy's okay.)

I'm still figuring out my way around Facebook, and while I'm actually ahead of the curve compared to some of my peers and pals since I've actually had a profile posted and have added "friends" for months now, I'm way late to the game compared the average 18 year old.

Every 40+ Facebooker's got a story of how they icked out their son/daughter, etc. when they found each other on the site. We invaded their turf and they're starting to move out, of like a neighborhood going through a gentrification. We're migrating from LinkedIn and changing the Facebook landscape to be more of a business networking tool, and they're moving off to greener pastures and social tools.

Applying the Facebook power to business is a double-edged sword, though. It's great to use for outreach and creating buzz or connections, and you can have a lot of fun building a community in our increasingly isolated world. But...and this isn't news, but bears repeating...you want to make sure you're giving the "right" impression, since you probably don't want to post that picture of you crushing a beer can on your forehead or worse, (supply your own visual here).

At Monday's Small Business Technology Summit, sales training pro Adrian Miller repeated the advice about carefully considering what you post:
"Think of your Facebook profile like your desk top. Would you want those pictures in your office for your boss to see?"

That advice applies to the "younger set," too. There are a zillion examples of bad judgement showing up later to bite one in the behind from aspiring Miss Americas to Minneapolis students. But we're all so eager for our 15 minutes of fame or so myopic about the pervasiveness of the internet that we post with abandon. (Yikes. Blogger heal thyself?)