Facebook

Recently Facebook has been made public to the stock-market. But there's constant debate about the value of Facebook for businesses.

What is the value of a 'like'? If someone 'likes' it, does it mean they're willing to buy its services? Will they use ad links to purchase services?

If a company is nationwide and has 4,000 'likes' vs. a local hamburger joint that has 40 'likes' does it reflect the company's popularity or determine its likely success? What if there was a 'dislike' button on Facebook? And that national company had 4,000 dislikes, while that hamburger joint had 2 dislikes? Would that be a more accurate description of its popularity?

Would 'likes' increase or decrease if any given company did/did not post updates about their business? If I 'liked' 40 different businesses, and each one had an update each week, would I feel bombarded with ads on my homepage? Personally, I would. And I'd go 'unlike' most or all of them. If this is the case, the value of a 'like' would go up. But the downside, is every business would have far fewer 'likes' than is possibly accurate.

Personally, as a young adult and from a technology-savy generation, I think the value of Facebook is minimal. I've clicked on ads on the side maybe 5 times in 5 years, and 3 of those times, it was spam that lead me to a completely different site. As a rule, I don't click on ads.

Secondly, I prefer to research companies from other sites to determine their quality of service. I don't get recommendations from Facebook friends hardly ever, and even when I do, I still do my research elsewhere.

Third, the biggest reason I use Facebook is because it's like an online address book. I don't have to try to keep up with my friends changing addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, and even if I loose all 3, I can still contact them via Facebook.

The second reason I use Facebook is to find out what my drifting away, or super busy friends are doing, without trying to get hold of them during their busy life, and making them recap their life for the 20th time. We can all keep up with each other's lives without making it impossible for everyone to get anything done. There are seasons in life where one is too busy to be social and other times, when it's time to strengthen old friendships.

And the last reason I use Facebook, is to try to determine the wide-spread opinions of people, particularly friends, on different topics... some political, some domestic, and to find out how informed my friends are on different subjects. This, however, has been disappointingly ineffective because even when I put a question in poll format and email it to 400 friends, I get a minimal number of responses. Not that I blame them; if everyone has 400 friends and a busy life with a finite amount of time, there will likely be fewer responses than hoped for.

For this reason, I've come to believe that Facebook is a place where many people tend to be slightly more self-centered; talking about their life, soapboxes, and complaining about little things... and only checking the status of their close friends and family... most of the time. I have nothing against that, and it has its place, but it definitely does nothing for the value of Facebook towards companies.