Beyond privacy and narcissim - facebook as a powerful tool

Personally, I find that facebook can be a little bit overwhelming sometimes. Sometimes I really don't care about what this person that I met that other time is doing for their spring break - I don't, I really don't (this is not to deny that I enjoy looking at pictures of my beloved ones (especially being far away from home I do really enjoy stalking my brothers and friends...). It's also a bit annoying to see people posting their Valentine's celebration pictures...shouldn't that be private? But let's be honest...I'm not that annoyed by it that I'm going to close my account. Imagine, how would I respond to "You don't have a facebook?" - Oh, my. But here I am to understand facebook's potential better.


I read the article about how today's online world - and facebook - have made out of privacy just a mere illusion. And while the article follows the sentiments I was describing above (I really don't care about how you feel about the weather today...hate news feeds) it also made me realize the extreme potential that facebook has a networking tool - beyond just peoples' private lives.

On one of my previous blogs I got a comment from Trista who shared some interesting tips with me. One of them was this link to one of the most popular blogs for non-profits written by Beth, the author of a book called "The Networked Non-Profit". As I explored her blog (thank you, Trista), I came across this interesting - and very much related to our class discussions and the topic of this blog - article about how to create and optimize a facebook content strategy.The article interviewed Allison Zarella, the co-author of a book called "The Facebook marketing book" which she wrote with her husband, Dan. The article mentioned the strategic importance of facebook as a (free!) marketing tool and explains ways in which the book gives advice as to how to make use of facebook's features (e.g. events) to maximize its use. I found this article great (and hope to get access to the book soon) because it pushed me to think of facebook as beyond just a exemplary case of narcissim (mashable, CNN, Huffington Post, etc) that destroys previously agreed standards of privacy. Although this doesn't mean I (we) should not be critical of some social media uses, after all, I'm here to learn about how to maximize the use of new social media tools.