Facebook and Workplace

How Facebook can be used beneficial within Workplace?

• Connect with your co-workers through Facebook. There exists a myth that it is a very bad idea to friend your co-workers on Facebook. This may be true or false to some extent. By being aware of some norms, Facebook can potentially be used in the workplace with a bunch of positive use.

1. To start with, understand the security settings of your Facebook profile. This is the Facebook page with key info about the Privacy settings of your profile http://www.facebook.com/help/privacy and its mandatory to be familiar with all those access settings completely.
2. "Who can see What" - We should always keep in mind that, We, the central players of the Facebook portal are the one who decide what information to share and with whom. It is absolutely under our control. We can create customized groups of friends list (a separate list for colleagues) and have the autonomy to share something to specific people or hide something from specific group.
3. We have to be alert and concerned about the fact that "Many Employers are currently watching their employees through Facebook". This should be ethically and legally questionable action of employers, but it is far beyond the topic to talk over in this particular post.
4. Be conscious about every single piece of info (particularly about your office politics/colleagues/clients) you share with your co-workers on Facebook. "You own your own words and their impacts".

• Company specific events like Tournaments for employees, weekend trip, pizza party etc can be hosted to maintain cooperative relations among coworkers with the help of Facebook. Create a Facebook event providing details about the event and invite your co-workers. The event can be in person or online.
• Fundraising social cause campaigns like Go Green, Book Sale, Craft show etc can be run within the workplace which is beneficial in constructing the workplace community. Facebook facilitates this process.
• You can build a powerful professional network. Facebook aids you to establish your professional identity and to collaborate with networks specific to your field of work. This can be achieved by maintaining your profile updated, complete and appropriate.
• Create Facebook Groups having members from the workplace with similar interests and passion like Writing, Walking, Yoga, Hiking etc. When you find people with similar interests within the workplace, it becomes easy to explore the passion to next level, accompanied by your workplace friends.
• Instant messaging through Facebook becomes a effective tool within the organization as it paves way to increased interaction and communication and instantaneous information sharing among the employees.
• Collaborate and learn through Facebook. Employees can learn together within networks of knowledgeable people by sharing their interests, sharing helpful videos, engaging with peers, having meaningful conversations which leads to quick learning and success.

Hence within the workplace, the employees can acquire extensive benefits from Facebook by handling it with appropriate responsibility. 

We welcome you to discuss in depth on this topic by conversing in the comment section.

Mark Zuckerberg - The brilliant Billionaire

Most of us allocate part of our worthy time daily on a trendy website named facebook.com, which is one of the top websites ranked by traffic today. Let us all make an effort to know about the face behind facebook and get inspired by the founder of facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, a harvard student, the creator of Facebook, reformed his skills into a business that costs billions. He is a successful businessperson and earned enormous wealth from his efforts.

His drive to facebook started in his second year of college, when Mark and his three friends created a website named Facemash. Facemash is the ancestor of Facebook. This website invited his classmates to compare their official photos to decide who was 'hot' or 'not'. It seems he hacked the University computers to get those photos. The site only lasted for few days until the university found about the site and closed it. But this incident earned him status among the Harvard students as a skillful programmer. Mark expressed in an article in The Harvard Crimson that he was inspired to make Facebook from the incident of Facemash. 

Ultimately Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook.com in February 2004 as an internal system for the students at the harvard university to connect with each other i.e only those people with a verified college e-mail address were allowed to sign up. Then FB spreads to some top universities in USA, by allowing them membership to the website. In June 2004 Facebook moved it's office with headquarters to Palo Alto, California and purchased the domain name facebook.com dropping 'The' from the existing domain name. Then Facebook opens its doors to High school students. The High school students dont have email addresses to verify which high school they are from, So Facebook allowed the students to verify one another. Later Facebook is open to employees of certain companies. At last anyone with any e-mail address is allowed to join Facebook. In October 2007, Microsoft acquired equity stake in facebook. In the mean time FB reached several milestones both in technical and business perspective. Mark Zuckerberg is named Time magazine's Person of the year 2010. Finally in May 2012, facebook went public.

Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg who created an energetic and passionate virtual environment which made billions of people to connect each other, share information, develop social relationship among one another through a painless mode, to be informed of the happenings in the world on top of individuals interest and to bring life style to the next level of innovation and entertainment.