I know I’m late to the party when it comes to Facebook. Until recently I kept asking myself “Why do I need YASN (yet another social network)?”
I try to stay fairly active on twitter, tried MySpace and found it didn’t resonate, and a few others, but just got overwhelmed time and time again with adding the same people to the network. When it came to facebook I decided to sit back and wait to see what happens.
Earlier this week I signed up and within 24 hours had 100 friends connected. I also did a little digging and found many more people getting in touch with me who already had a presence. Procrastination paid off in this case.
By waiting long enough, the network was already built enough that I could jump in and be well connected (personally and professionally.) During the past couple years I have learned the value of creating and maintaining a network. I see facebook as a valuable tool to continue maintaining that network. Facebook seems to be one of the better places to consolidate contracts from many aspects of my life. I am still learning my way around the interface – there is a lot to explore and I can’t seem to manually find my way to some of the places that are sent as links in emails, but I’m getting there.
Facebook doesn’t replace my personal (family) website nor does it replace my personal (own) web presence, but it does have a place.
Now the challenge will be to keep it up to date so it doesn’t get stale – the challenge of any website.
I’m right there with you, Chuck. I was about two years behind everyone else, and only started using Facebook regularly over the last few months. I, too, am still getting used to it.