Facebook: how are you using it?

[Laura Gibbs]

Has Facebook has become a part of your online professional web life? Is your OU department/organization using Facebook to reach out to students? If so: Do you do that through your personal profile, or is there a way to create an institutional profile for an organization, separate from a personal identity? Is it even possible to create a kind of im-personal Facebook identity (say, for each of my classes), so that the class can have a space on Facebook that is not defined by being "me"...?

This is something I have wrestled with myself: I'm not a big fan of Facebook for many reasons (too locked down, intrusive ads - I prefer the open Internet, ad-free whenever possible), so instead I've cultivated my web presence in other ways (blogging, etc.), and I try to help my students cultivate a broader web presence, too, although they are certainly avid Facebook users.

End result: I have a Facebook profile, but I don't "friend" people on Facebook (simply because I was getting friend requests from students who were not exactly my favorite people, along with friend requests from students who really feel like friends). So... I would like to find a way to make use of Facebook, without having it be "me" exactly. Ideas? Possibilities?

Meanwhile, for your amusement, here is a Facebook cartoon that just showed up in Zits today (you can click on the image for a larger view):

[Laura Gibbs]

Someone sent me another Facebook cartoon! :-)

[Scott Watkins]

I'm cross referencing this from the 'Social Networking' forum:

Facebook has set up what they call 'Facebook Pages' to allow businesses, non-profits, organizations, etc. to take advantage of the Facebook phenomenon. You can learn more and even browse some other pages from the following link:

http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages

[Laura Gibbs]

Scott, that is awesome - it is exactly what I was looking for!!!

I made a page for my class, but removed basically all the applications - I just want it to be a way for students to easily find each other and then hook up if they want on Facebook:
MythFolklore on Facebook

What's cool is that it let me import via RSS my blog of class announcements into the Notes application, so I can run the class announcements there, too, automatically, with no extra effort for me. Very cool! I definitely don't want to get sucked into my students' Facebook world, but if this is a way I can encourage the social networking they are already engaged in, so much the better. THANK YOU.

[Konstantin Tovstiadi]

I use it to spy on my friends and send mail to people who never check regular e-mail but are always on Facebook. I am reluctant to post any content (photos or blog entries) there because you never know how they will use it; plus their copyright rules give them almost complete rights to your content - no way!

[Laura Gibbs]

Hi Kosta! I am so with you there - I just don't get the whole Facebook thing (the ads are very intrusive, unlike GoogleAds which are totally ignorable, at least in the way I look at a webpage)... but there really are people who have given up email for other forms of communication - that's actually had some benefits for me as an online teacher, since it has prompted me to try to avoid email as much as possible in my online classes. I still have a lot of email (with 100 students, it's inevitable) - but it is less than what I used to deal with by maybe a factor of 10 or so. Relying less on email has definitely suited my students and is good for me, too! :-)