“Hi Steve! Great thoughts and very nicely put together! Thanks for adding further up into the conversation. You almost nearly convinced me to dive in and join the rest of the crowd. But, to follow up further from your conversation, I am very serious about social media as I feel it is helping change all of the negativity around KM that we have been “suffering from” all of these years. However, from that to say I, or whoever else, is an expert, it is an understatement. Lots and lots of stuff has been written about what an expert is and what is not.

And I feel that if I would join Facebook and start using it would that make me an expert on the subject? I don’t think so. I just become another user, like with many other platforms. And like everyone else. Everyone that claims to be an expert in whatever the field clearly needs to demonstrate they have got that expertise and leadership to show it and I am not sure about you, but I know a very few of those. And certainly not in the social media space where people are just getting started with it

I prefer to say, more than an expert, that knowledge workers become knowledgeable about a particular subject, which they do, but from that to say they are experts for just using one tool or another is a bit of an understatement.

My authority to comment on what I see about Facebook is not such. People may agree with it or not, but what gives me the capability of exercising that authority. Do I have any diploma or certification to justify that authority, or is it going to be based on how I get to use the tools, because if that is the case there are then millions of experts with authority on Facebook. WOW! Never thought about that. Why would I want to add further up into the clutter, eh?

Oh, and one final comment, to say that Facebook is a social network, when they themselves deny that fact is not helping much social computing and Facebook. It is just a platform to aggregate content, just like with any other application out there. Before was MySpace (Do you have a MySpace address?), then OrKut (Got another account there?) and so forth. Facebook is just the next one up. Pretty interesting and exciting, but just because everyone decides to jump into the river does not necessarily mean we can walk along the coast, right?

(Yes, you nearly convinced me to join Facebook. The closest I have been thus far )”

I surely am following the conversation(s), Dennis, from you and everyone in my blogroll, and beyond, who are already making use of Facebook and who are sharing their own experiences on the subject. From what I have been reading though, I haven’t been persuaded just yet

Pretty much like what happened with MySpace. Everyone encouraged me as well to give it a try and play around with it. And at the time I was not persuaded. Not then. Not even now. And unless Facebook changes a few things, some of them highlighted over here in this post, I guess it will never be able to persuade me.

Oh, just so that you can have some good fun, I just joined Pulse from Plaxo and played around with it already. We shall see how that goes…

“When I asked this question, I was asking it in terms of a Marketing Professional who “sells” Social Media Marketing as a part of their Marketing practice.”

With that particular context and given the explanation you have provided, I can certainly agree with you on it. It is not a nice-have, but a must-have! In that particular scenario you are describing it is something that I would call essential and out of the question. Oh, by the way, not just for marketing professionals, but for everyone out there who is advising clients on what is happening in the social computing scene. As simple as that.

Continuing further with some of the arguments put together, now that we are in full agreement with the initial thoughts, I agree with you about the role Facebook has been having in countries like Canada, but so has Orkut in Brazil, for instance, or XING for the rest of Europe, Bebo in the UK, LinkedIn in the US, and the list goes on and on and on. I am thinking that just because the penetration rate has been high enough in one particular country that does not mean it would pick up elsewhere as well. There are a whole bunch of issues, like culture, customs, languages, etc. etc. that would need to be taken into account. And Facebook would have to accommodate to that as well, whether it likes it or not. Have you heard of Facebook picking up some more momentum in countries so varied like Brazil, Russia, China or India? I wonder what would be the next big thing for them…

“If you’re claiming – as a Marketer – to understand this space and you have not be involved (or even tried out) Facebook, I would most certainly have a difficult time working with you”

You wouldn’t have a problem working with me in that particular case, because I am in the exact same situation. I am been involved in a good number of conversations, perhaps the subject for another weblog post, where people have been saying that you surely can sell Social Media without actually making use of it, but like my good friend Ian Hughes used to say, “Web 2 is Web Do“. And I still stand by it. You need to have an exposure with those social software tools that you feel you would be the most connected with so that the same way you are sold on them, you can evangelise about them to other knowledge workers.

RE: “It’s where the mass population” > Errr, I would say probably better where a small fraction of the mass population of Internet users. Still to be paying attention to it, no doubt, but not just as the only thing there is, because it isn’t.

I surely agree with your final comments, and perhaps an open question to you and everyone else who may dare to answer it: How long would it be before we would possibly not have enough physicial time to work our way on all of the different social networks out there today? Something tells me that we may be reaching that point very soon, if not already. So,imo, there must be something else than we need to do than just having a presence in each and everyone of those tools.

Thanks again for the feedback and for dropping by!

As always with these new toys – we need follow the conversation and see if we’re persuaded.

Never say never – I did about Twitter ans felt a complete idiot when the penny dropped. But hey – I’m enterprisey at heart so…

It’s hard to get a message across in a tweet, so let me frame it a little.

When I asked this question, I was asking it in terms of a Marketing Professional who “sells” Social Media Marketing as a part of their Marketing practice.

If we’re talking on that level, I would have to disagree with you. I think it’s really hard to work with Clients in this space if you have not played with – and are unfamiliar with – Facebook.

Regardless of privacy, etc… it is, by far, one of the leading online environments in Canada, and this is where most of the people online are congregating. If you’re claiming – as a Marketer – to understand this space and you have not be involved (or even tried out) Facebook, I would most certainly have a difficult time working with you.

It’s not a question of whether I like it or not (or even if I agree with its policies). It’s where the mass population is and where they are connecting to one another.

It reminds me of the whole “I don’t have time for Second Life.” We’re all busy. I get it. But, as a Marketer, my job is to know where my clients’ consumers are and what they’re talking about. Not being in on Facebook is doing them a disservice.

I am not sure I would agree with Dennis on whether what you are talking about would be OpenID or not. However, you bring in a superb point. Something that a few folks have been mentioning all along and which I guess is going to be the next killer app. for whichever social network that makes it work: a universal social networking profile that you can reuse in multiple social networking sites with a single click. Something like a universal profile that you can re-use over and over and over, including the carrying-over-with-you of your social networks contacts so that right away you have got it up and running and ready to go, instead of having to build on it like we all do with most of them, which means you are always going to miss folks out because of wanting to get value add right away.

To me, that is one of the main reasons why Facebook will not cut it. It is just another data aggregator. The next killer app. would be the one providing that universal social networking profile that would work for say Top 30 or 50 social networks out there. That would be a good start and something that I would go and say: “Where do I sign up, please?”

Thanks again for adding further into the conversation.