There was an interesting piece on the Irish TV news last night about the rush to register names on Facebook – the likes of www.facebook.com/BrianCowen, for example.
There were dire warnings from various “experts” about the perils of having someone else register your name on Facebook. This warning was extended to “celebrities”, politicians and businesses, with one legal expert saying that it was far more prudent to simply register your name now than chase it later after some cybersquater has devalued it through misrepresentation.
Now, the entire output of a Siberian salt related industry is needed here. The first thing one must do is qualify the “must do” nature of this land rush. Who needs to be on Facebook? Does it support your business, political ambitions, professional development or general wellbeing to be on Facebook? If the answer to any of these questions is not immediately yes, then you may not need to rush to the PC.
For example, many businesses have opened Facebook pages because they naturally sell to the people who most use Facebook – namely young teens to twenty-somethings who use it almost exclusively for the social aspects of the site. Despite the fact that Facebook itself is a business, most other businesses are only interested in it for the number of eyes balls it can deliver. Now, if the nature of those Mark I eye balls does not suite your business, do you need a Facebook page? Eh, no.
In fact, does Brian Cowen need a Facebook page? Probably not. Why? Because the people on Facebook are unlikely to fall in behind a political party such as that behind our current Government based on a page on a social networking site. Despite the normal nature of your average social networking site user (I believe it was best summed up by Sex Pistols in Pretty Vacant), they are at least savvy users of IT and so know where to go to find out what our political overlords are up to and whether or not so support them.
So what does that leave? Does IBM need a Facebook page? Probably not. Will Big Blue sell a few more mainframes/servers/cloud computing seats as a result of having one? No, I’d say not.
The question then is should Joe Public give a toss? Eh, no, not really. If you are not given to using social networking sites already, the likelihood is that they are largely irrelevant, especially for IT professionals who have more than likely got a professional networking page. Social networking is not likely to be the e-mail of the future, in that your granddad asks you to set him up with a service, as many have done with e-mail.
Who should worry then? Well, no one really because even if your given name is your trade mark, the likelihood is that unless that moniker is already on the way to being unique, then there’s another sod out there with the same one, unlikely to be earning a crust doing the same thing as you.
So, who is more entitled to www.facebook.com/AsbestosInObstetrics_Murphy? – whoever can be bothered to register it.
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