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Networking With Facebook

“Facebook,… isn’t that for kids?”

I get asked that all the time, and the remarkable answer is ‘No’. Many are surprised to hear that one of the fastest growing segments of Facebook users is business people over the age of 25. Many of them ‘business executives’. If you are not a Facebook user, you may be missing an opportunity…

Join the Utah Valley Business Group on Facebook

Facebook is set to become a defacto standard for business networking as the college crowd that made it famous move into the workforce. College students who were ‘raised’ on social networking are adapting to leverage their online social skills in the work environment to great effect.

Serious business has embraced Facebook as an effective tool in departmental communications as well as sales and marketing. IBM has conducted successful internal experiments with Facebook. Among the earliest corporate adopters of Facebook are some surprisingly big names including Gap, Intel, Pepsi, Microsoft and Apple.

This particular opportunity has caught the eye of local businesses who are engaged in building applications that enable Facebook users to take advantage of social skills, and a wide audience. In fact, a Facebook group called ‘Utah CEOs With A Facebook Strategy‘, a local endeavor headed by Paul Allen, has nearly 500 members, many of which are Utah Valley businesses. You can find them on Facebook. An impressive number of successful Facebook applications were started right here in Utah Valley.

Of particular note, Paul Allen’s ‘Were Related‘ application boasts over 141,000 active daily users. Linking Universe, another Utah Valley product, is recognized as the first full featured business application for the Facebook platform.

Are You On Facebook? You may be missing opportunities…

True Story: I know a highly respected Utah Valley senior executive who recently created a Facebook account. We chuckled about what his younger daughter might think to see ‘dad’ in an online social environment.

A week or two later when we had a chance to catch up, he reported his amazement at the number of ‘old friends’ he had become reaquainted with. You won’t travel far in the high tech industry without running into Facebook. Not only that, but he had also been introduced to a couple new prospects that his company is now meeting with for business.

He is an instant believer, but he isn’t the only one who has had this experience: Facebook is growing at an accelerating rate, with nearly 80 million active users worldwide and over 100,000 new members every day.

Talk about a market. Here are some additional stats that every Utah Valley business should consider…

Facebook is the sixth most trafficked website in the world according to ComScore. Facebook is the second most popular social media site, with MySpace running first. There are over 55,000 regional, business-related, college and high school networks within Facebook. This includes our own Utah Valley Business Group.

More than half of Facebook users are outside of college. That means nearly half will be graduating into the workforce in the next four years or so. Facebook maintains a healthy 85 percent market share of all 4-year universities in the Unites States. That’s a lot of connected people.

Connecting with Facebook is easy, fun, and painless. Even better, and perhaps more remarkable, is that it is free. Free connections, free information, free applications. Free opportunities for business.

How to you get started? Easy. Go to facebook.com and start an account. Once you have created an account, which only takes a couple of minutes, your next step is to connect with someone. I guarantee you know someone in Facebook, and all it takes is one. Once you connect to someone, you will start to feel the magic of Facebook as old friends find you, and new friends meet you. Before you know it, you will be connecting with people all over Utah Valley, and all over the world. Pay attention; those are opportunities out there.

Once you get in, join our Utah Valley Business Group. You will find a growing number of friends of similar interests among our group, and perhaps a familiar friend or two. Better yet, our group is dedicated to seeking ways to find business opportunities among our Facebook experience.

Join in and participate! We look forward to seeing you.

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