OK, for a while there I thought it was just me, but I've been checking around, and a number of people have confirmed: Facebook appears to be accellerating fast in the tech business community. If you have not joined yet, I am guessing you will be invited to join, soon (quick: check your in-box).
A few things appear to be driving adoption:
*Facebook, which began as a "social utility" for college campuses, is now open to everyone. It's been this way for a while, but only recently have I noticed a big uptake.
*The reason for that big uptake? Well, more recently, Facebook opened its platform to developers, spurring lots of fast innovation among the hordes of widget makers and widgetizers of other Web 2.0 tools. One of the coolest of these tools is the TextMe app, which makes it super simple for friends to text you directly from your profile page. Sure -- nothing terribly innovative about this idea, but on Facebook the install process is so simple you hardly need to think about it. Ditto for most of the other tools I am looking at (e.g., the Pownce and YouTube widgets.) In the meantime, the freaks and geeks that make up Silicon Valley culture are having a great big party on Facebook, and with the sprawling networks that these folks are capable of creating, the safe money says that Facebook may cross the chasm, where other platforms haven't.
*Facebook is both beautiful and practical. I love the environment that the platform enables you to create, mixing and combining subtle forms of social gathering, referrals, ad hoc group formation, private communication, insider gossip, etc. I've been pulling people in from my other networks (e.g., LinkedIn), easily, and I am connecting, accidentally, with people that I haven't seen in many years. As a college freshman, one of my first jobs was to sell bagels on campus. I remember my very first customer, a very friendly gal from Alabama (she took pity on me -- she and her friend bought a half dozen). The year -- 1977. Found her today -- almost 30 years later -- on Facebook, and learned that she's in marketing. Fortuitous, huh? She's now in my network.
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