A New Perspective

This week I was presented with the question: What’s the point of Facebook?

My initial reaction was to say, “To re-establish or build relationships.”

But to people outside of the PR field, what does that really mean? After doing some research, it seems like many people have a very narrow view of social media and the benefits it offers – something that I guess isn’t really a surprise considering how many businesses take social networking for granted.

This person said her view was that it was merely a place where college students met to hook-up. I explained to her to benefits of social networking sites from a business perspective: being able to identify target segments easily, being able to have open, two-way dialog with your publics, and establishing a better brand through constant communication. Of course, those just skim the surface of the benefits, but she still seemed skeptical.

When the business side failed to catch her interest, I explained how it lets people build professional and personal relationships with old friends and new colleagues. She was very much under the impression that if an old friend wanted to contact her, they would contact her regardless of social media.

I agreed, however I explained that Facebook and other social networking sites offer an easy way to find your old friends.

Most of all, as a new professional, this really opened my eyes as to how social media might be viewed by many in the general population and made me take a step back and look at it from a very broad perspective. I think I fell into the trap of believing that since I am very evangelistic about social media – most people must agree.

I was also a little alarmed at the hard time I had explaining what the point of Facebook was. I felt like I had a solid grasp of the pros/cons of social networking and was surprised to be so unsure of my response. It looks like I have a little more reading and research to do.

So tell me, what do you think the point of Facebook is?