The Jeff Pulver Blog: Facebook has become my Portal for Business Communication

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March 14, 2008

Facebook has become my Portal for Business Communication

During 2008 Facebook has become my portal for business communication.

I didn’t set out to make Facebook my portal for business communication, but it is something that has just happened. And no, not everyone I deal with on an everyday basis is on Facebook, but enough people are that it just works for me.

Would I prefer to be using a platform whose messaging system had a great search engine, supported attachments and offered the ability to forward messages? Yes. Does Facebook offer this to me at the moment? No. But somehow, someway, something has happened during the past number of months and I have found myself interconnected with people on Facebook. When/if Facebook improves its messaging capabilities Facebook will be in a position to compete directly with Gmail. It is the social network of my friends and business associates that brought me to Facebook and that is keeping me there. A service provider who just provides email hosting does not necessarily have all of the right ingredients to replicate and enhance the experience.

During the course of each business day I find myself responding more and more to messages from people who are also using Facebook as their platform for business. It is hard for me to argue against using Facebook for business since I have managed to build a list of friends who do not spam me.

In the weeks leading up to my recent trip to Israel, I found myself confirming my meetings almost exclusively on Facebook. Looking back at my trip last week, I had a total of 44 meetings and 39 of them were scheduled and confirmed using Facebook.

While I have no intention of ever giving up my jeff@pulver.com email address, in the days of receiving too much asynchronous communication, Facebook has become my default platform of choice to use for business communication.

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Tags: facebook, email, Social Media, Jeff Pulver