Match.com, LinkedIn, and Twitter are among the long list of companies I hear people saying that Facebook will either crush or merge with as we continue to weave Facebook more tightly, and centrally, into the fabric of our internet lives. But in the midst of FedExing a bunch of copies of the Rethink book this week to press and other people, two things became very clear to me:
1) Trying to figure out the street address of some well known businesses is much harder than I expected in this day and age. Not fun.
2) Reaching out to someone in e-mail, someone you have never met, has never been easier, because of Facebook. In many cases I sent the person a message in Facebook explaining that I wanted to send them a copy of the book, and if they would supply an address, I would send it, and that worked really well.
This week I reached out to someone in The White House, a famous author, a famous book critic, and others and it took almost no effort even though I only knew how to spell their names and a I knew at least little something about where they work and what kinds of friends they have. Searching for a name of Facebook, you will usually get several names in the result set, but if you can’t tell from the photo alone (which I can about 50% of the time), just looking at their friends is usually enough to figure out if it’s the person you are after. From there, I usually send the person a message (instead of a friend request if I don’t actually know them), and nine times out of ten they turn around and send me a friend request.
I spend my days trying to help people get out of their various “how” traps, where the need to rethink “how” they do “what” they do, usually with dramatic results. With e-mail, the “what” is pretty basic Communicate Message or something along those lines, and “how” it’s done today, whether through hotmail, gmail, our Outlook, we start out either by looking up the e-mail address of the person, or if they are already in our address book, just start typing their name and it resolves. But I meet a lot of new people every week and I can’t help but think that the following things are going to be impacted by Facebook:
1) “How” we exchange information. Business cards become a big waste of money for a lot of people, even people who meet a lot of new people every day, if you can simply look up a name and connect and learn a lot.
2) “How” we search for someone. Why search for someone on Google, Live, or Yahoo if you can search for them, and verify it’s them, and message them in the same interface? This is a huge advantage for Facebook now that they so deep in so many social networks.
3) “How” we choose which account to use. I have four e-mail addresses, and I know some people who use several. If you know the person is a regular on Facebook, they will keep their Facebook account connected to the account they want it in, so just send the message via Facebook and no more wondering which account to use. I have been doing a lot more of that.
I would say that >50% of my social e-mail has been going through Facebook lately, and I have almost stopped using hotmail and gmail. I have too many attachments and confidentiality issues to stop using Outlook for work, but while I would be very concerned if I were some of the companies named at the top of this post, but I wonder if the bigger impact is on how people search and message.
That will be a gigantic change if it continues.
-Ric
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