I agree that you can definitely get a good feel for who someone is by looking at their Facebook wall. But what about people who consciously try to keep their professional and private lives separate? If you search for someone, but they have their Facebook page completely private (except for possibly a profile pic, which may be telling in and of itself), then what?

Well, maybe not. It comes down to how you use Facebook and LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn strictly for professional connection while Facebook is very personal to me. That’s where I post photos of my family and connect with family and friends carrying out many different conversations. The people most dear to me aren’t physically near so Facebook allows me to share our family’s life with them. Better than sending the holiday photo and letter once a year. Only professional contacts I’ve developed a deeper relationship with will get the request to be friend. And many who contact me, I request we connect via Twitter or LinkedIn. Sometimes it is good to keep professional and personal is different platforms.

Ann Marie:

Here’s the problem though. Remember when people used to go to Friendster? Then MySpace? Now FB and LinkedIn. It’s a time game – It’s only a matter of time before people don’t want to go visit more than one profile – and I believe FB will win that war.

I agree with Ann Marie – I rarely use Facebook for biz-type connections, and we recommend that professionals not use Facebook for business networking if they also want to use it for family and friend-related fun. We do recommend they use LinkedIn groups/answers for networking and building thought-leadership.

I disagree completely. The group discussions on LinkedIn are much more vibrant than anything Facebook currently has to offer for businesses, and it’s also much easier to do quick-and-dirty tasks like generating a potential lead list with LinkedIn than it is with Facebook.

Add me to the list of people who keep business and personal strictly separate. None of my business colleagues have access to my Facebook page, and my privacy settings restrict very heavily what the general public can and cannot see.

My LinkedIn profile, on the other hand, is for everyone to see. It also helps me keep my professional contact database up-to-date. LinkedIn has gotten me jobs (it’s the first place headhunters search) and it’s allowed me to reach out to a wider professional network.

Your business challenges may be short enough to fit into a tweet, but I prefer the more verbose forums that the LinkedIn groups offer. Each to their own, but we work in very different businesses with very different models.

Wow. For once, I absolutely disagree with you Peter. Aside from a handful of social media though leaders, you included, my FACEBOOK is a relatively known and intimate group of social relationships (high school, college, the neighborhood, friends, relatives). Linkedin is “reserved” for professional relationships and and industry groups. Purposefully, I try to establish a boundary between the two sites. Truth be told, I prefer to not let FACEBOOK “friends” know the intimate details of my professional life,hence professional and personal. And, oddly, I was linked to your blog today through Linkedin (NOT FACEBOOK) friend.

I wanted to respond and ask more than tell my thoughts on the two very different networks here.

I am never surprised by the love/hate relationships people have with certain networks. I am really surprised, given the business you are in and the amount of travel that you do, with respect to the non-value you see in LinkedIn. I have been on LinkedIn for years now, have built strong relationships, and have driven revenue from those relationships.

My question is, what exactly do you not like about LinkedIn? The interface, their crappy app for iPhone, or the types of interactions that you have had experience with? I also understand the Group issue as well – too many of them with very little speed to intel like Twitter.

Lastly, what is it that you love about Facebook for Business that you feel creates revenue generating relationships? I certainly don’t think that the (unbelievably hard to find) adjustments to Education and Work tabs, that you have to go in and add a Project to and somehow collaborate with others is any competition with Huddle, or Inbox on LinkedIn.

Curious to know your thoughts here as the post was short and sweet, but really a slam with no facts that make me learn one way or the other which platform is headed for doom or success for business relations.

What you say?

Andrew:

$100 says in 24 months, LinkedIn is irrelevant. Deal?

I’m with you, however many people are still value the old-school privacy and will not open up their Facebook to anyone but close family and friends. There is still plenty room for a social network dedicated to professional relationships…for the time being.

A punch in the gut? Yes. A shot through the heart? Not yet.

Mike Fraietta

Great post! I completely agree with you. Today people need to realize there is no privacy online. Anything you post online can be seen even with barriers put up. There needs to be a good balance of professional and personal with your facebook page. The problem is how to do that.

I’m with the others here – I try to keep Facebook for personal contacts and use Linked In for the professional side. I doubt my Linked In connections would be interested in my vacation photos, but my Facebook people would. Conversely, my Facebook contacts couldn’t care less about the big work project I just finished. Also if you are job hunting or want to expand your professional network Linked In is invaluable. Many recruiters have told me they will look for candidates on Linked In before placing an ad, and they give more creedence to people who have good recommendations.

Dean:

Come on… “Edit profile–>Education and Work.” That’s really hard to find? Stevie Wonder could find that.

What I hate about LinkedIn, besides their incredibly clunky interface on ANY platform, is how much it FEELS like work to me. I hit FB probably 20+ times a day – on any device – laptop, Berry, whatever – To find out what colleagues are up to, to post jobs, you name it. LinkedIn doesn’t serve that purpose at all.

To me, LinkedIn screams “WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON” and that’s it.

Facebook screams “WHAT ARE YOU DOING OF INTEREST?” To me, that’s much, much more all-encompassing – And that’s what I want to know.

And to those (Matthew, etc.) who keep it separate – Mark my words – In 24 months, the concept of “professional vs. personal” is simply going to go away. You’re going to have to adapt – If that means posting only photos that can’t get you in trouble (which you should be doing anyway,) and dumping friends who don’t get it, so be it.

It’s all moving to one network, one screen, one world. And it’s almost here.

I, for one, look forward to it. :)

Deal Peter. Deal.
(I would also argue that VOCUS will be a substantially different business model too, thanks to “disrupters” like you).

I agree with the previous commenter: I believe Facebook and LinkedIn have two mostly-distinct use cases for me. Facebook is primarily a social pipeline and I use it to maintain contact with people I (mostly) don’t work with. LinkedIn is a work-related pipeline I use to maintain contact with people I (mostly) work with. There is some overlap, of course, but the two populations are largely different.

Facebook would like to be more work-related, I think, because that will make it easier to actually be perceived as a sustainable business (I’m thinking along the lines of http://37signals.com/svn/posts.....3000000000) and perceives LinkedIn as being relatively weak, because LinkedIn will not be able to move on Facebook’s turf.

I’ll continue to use both. I will likely expand my work-related content on Facebook and use it more than I do now, which is really not much. I won’t use LinkedIn less, because too many people I know use it for work-related reasons.

And did I use “use cases”? I’m sorry, I’m usually better than that, but I’m not yet fully caffeinated…

Cheers!

LinkedIn is a live Rolodex for business and good for finding other contacts in companies – that’s it, nothing more or less despite what LI will tell you. Business is boring, hence the 15 minutes a month the avg. LI user actually stays on the site (most surely that avg. is dramatically spiked by recruiters). Facebook users on the other hand (at last glance) stayed there about 340 minutes a month. FB already dwarfs LI as we know.

I agree with Ann Marie about trying to keep professional & personal lives separate. I will say however that I use FB as a business tool as well as my personal stuff. I have my profile & I have fan pages for both of my businesses & I manage a few fan pages for clients. I have spent a lot of time in personal life working on being transparent with who I am. What does that mean to my FB activity? I am who I am in all parts of my life, part of what I do puts me way out in the public & by blogging etc you put who you out into the world for people to see. This is good & bad & opens me up to comments & criticism by people who think they “know” me. It doesn’t bother me or I wouldn’t do what I do. FB is public in many respects, I don’t let just anyone friend me or view much about my personal stuff unless I choose to. The other side of this is that in these days of such open access, you choose what & to whom you allow out there. Deeply personal stuff is private & not meant for a Tweet or FB post unless you truly feel comfortable putting it out into the world. For me I want that transparency of the people I work with, spend time with etc. I don’t need intimate details thank you very much but I do want to know if they “walk their walk and talk their talk” all the way around.

Peter I agree with you FB will be the death of Linkedin but there will be some folks who will hold on to it for whatever reason. Did you watch the interview with Zuckerberg on 60 mins? This kid is no dummy he fill whatever void he sees & will
be leading edge on moving people further into just what social networking will be in the future. Good, bad or indifferent, however you feel about that, it’s the reality.

Peter – I do wear reading glasses :) I wasn’t speaking for me or you types, but for those who simply think that most Social Network Platforms (especially Facebook) are difficult to even set their privacy to their liking.

LinkedIn is business, Facebook is Social – I get it. I would say that most of the LinkedIn Users are B2B. Having been a BizDev guy for 15 years, and selling 70+ millon, partly using LinkedIn driven relationships, that’s all it’s really good for is Business.

As far as the “all-in-one” Personas we will become, not buying it. People’s behaviors won’t/can’t allow them to be just one. They like the ability to separate their lives, which is why they use Facebook in personal circles only. I know I do.

I would love to see what you are basing this statement on – one only type of relationship profile online. If anything, I believe that their will be a bigger need for a division of their business lives and personal lives. I could pull the research on these conversations to see the stats on that-which would be very interesting.

Dean: (Also posted in braille – just kidding.)

Mostly, I’m basing it on the fact that in 2009, I pulled over $180k in consulting work alone, directly attributable to my engagement on Facebook – And not from people who were my friends – but people who asked their friends “I need someone who is X” and those people they asked, were my friends.

The new currency is trusted recommendation – I don’t see that on LinkedIn. I don’t know enough about anyone through their LinkedIn profile to trust enough to recommend them. I DO however, get that from Facebook.

It’s not about Personal vs. Professional – Quite the opposite – It’s about the Brand of You. And that brand encompasses everything you do, all the time.

I totally and completely agree with you Peter! Great article!

Peter, you and I are fortunate – we can mesh our online identities into one persona, because we have our own businesses, and the way we use social media platforms is directly related to the business we do. I can drunk-tweet, or get personal and funny on Facebook, because it’s unlikely my company’s clients will care that much, as long as we get them the results we promise. And, if they are offended, well…it happens, but it’s not a tragedy – I won’t be out of work if we lose a single client.

But if you work for Sears or DISH Network or some big corporation, you don’t have the same freedom to mesh the personal and professional. Yet. It’s still too easy to get into trouble for some online indiscretion.

I do believe that, as the Millennials move into leadership positions, we’ll see a fuzziness and a more forgiving stance on online foibles. And, when that happens, people’s online identities will be more unified, with less of a delineation between professional and personal. But that’s not 24 months away. It won’t happen in earnest until the current generation of execs moves on, and the digital natives take the reins.

Sure, linkedin is for professionals and facebook for personal life. But it’s already starting to blur with coworkers asking to be “friended” and my friends (who work in totally different industries and with whom I have never had a business discussion with) are in my Linkedin professional network.

Maybe the larger point is that Facebook, if it figures out how to do this properly, is in a much better position to take the Linkedin market than Linkedin is in being able to take the Facebook market. Managing multiple profiles/persona’s is a pain and someone might figure out how to manage just one profile that I can customize to each recipient.

Facebook wins – clear and simple. I believe the real issue here is something one of the comments brought up – personal vs. professional. I looked through all your subsequent posts to see who was going to address it – of course it was you, Peter.

The “personal vs. professional” thing is going to die – that is LinkedIn’s life support for the moment. The people that still care about this don’t get it yet – EVERYTHING you do online or via mobile is going to be public.

I used to pay separate companies for my phone, cable and TV bills. I used to go to the grocery store AND then the hardware store. I used to wait for Netflix to deliver my DVD’s via snailmail. I used to think Facebook was for pictures and MySpace was for music.

It’s called convergence people – it is coming if you like it or not.

I must say that I am shocked that early adopter, social media evangelist, and public relations capitalist is drunk on the FACEBOOK Kool-Aid. Has bartender Zuckerberg slipped him a mickey.

Your use of FACEBOOK is non-traditional as is your brand and your depth of relationships through HARO. You chose to strategically build your brand in a unified manner as a social media, for lack of better words, whore. (And I mean that as a compliment!).

Most (older) people approach FACEBOOK as a social, somewhat childish past time. Do you expect my niece, a senior in college, to revamp her FACEBOOK profile and delete the 5,000+ beer pong pictures and “build her brand.” Not everyone lives their professional life seamlessly aligned with the personal life AND, despite the preachings of Chris Brogan and yourself, not everyone is educated nor concerned about their brand. Most people are concerned with paying their next mortgage payment, health premium or living life.

Just as HARO changed the P.R. model and Groupon altered the local landscape, I cannot believe that you placed all your eggs in the FACEBOOK basket.

Peter — you are an alpha’s alpha in the digital world. I love your posts, but outside of the razor’s edge players like yourself, FB is not the digital town square most of us have been lead to believe. I have watched with great fascination as my PR peers have joined, participated, lurked then disappeared. The vast majority of the interactions are a cross between today’s weather, Mom’s bean soup recipe and reunions. I beg my colleagues to jump in and participate — but they don’t. LI does meet and exceed many of my business needs — particularly networking. FB may evolve to something higher, but it still has to contend with Farmville freaks. I won’t take your $100, but let’s reconsider the bet in 24 months.

This comment says it all for me:

“The new currency is trusted recommendation – I don’t see that on LinkedIn. I don’t know enough about anyone through their LinkedIn profile to trust enough to recommend them. I DO however, get that from Facebook.”

There are people in my LinkedIn network that I only know peripherally. I’m not going to ask them for advice or recommendations. But I’ll put out a question on Facebook and trust what people are telling me is the truth and not some sales pitch.

If the Facebook you is a real and honest representation of who you are, that’s the person I want to know. I couldn’t care less about your stuffy, rehearsed LinkedIn profile.

Peter,

Good answer. I agree with the trusted relationship part.

As to the $180k on Facebook in Consulting Fee’s your friends drive… you owe them a nice Christmas Gift :)

Good conversation.

Dean

Are you aware of the enhancements that Linked In is developing called “Signal”? This should be improving search capability and will also interface with Twitter thereby making it more dynamic and up-to-date.

Agree with other comments re: separating LI and FB as there is some recent jurisprudence regarding human resources matters relying on Facebook intel. This would not likely happen if people were keeping their personal and professional lives more distinct.

Great comments.

I completely agree with Andrew, Ann Marie, Eric, Scott and Matthew.
LinkedIn, Twitter -> Great for business/professional connections
Facebook -> Family, friends
I don’t want to bother my family and friends with topics that are completely irrelevant to them (well they actually told me they don’t want to be bothered)
I don’t want to discuss my cousin’s birthday with my colleagues.

So, this is not a LinkedIn killer for me

The company I currently work for practices this.

When Facebook first became public, I remember thinking to myself, “Only make public what you want employers to see, everything else is solely for those on my friends list.”

Here we are 4 years later and what do you know. It’s common practice for companies to check out potential hires. :)

If people have a problem with employers looking/searching/learning about you, then learn to use the privacy settings more accurately.
If that’s too much hassle for you, well then, good luck.

Samantha:

Privacy Filters.

Samantha (and Andrew),

Privacy filters only work at Facebook’s indulgence. We’ve all seen them change the settings when new functionality comes on board, with the default giving us less privacy, not more.

Oops. Did not see that you acknowledged privacy settings. My bad.

Nothing is really that private. If I know your name, I know way too much than you want me to know. FACEBOOK “personal info” often lists, well, personal info and pictures. Linkedin helps draw the line.

I think there is a place for both. Not everyone is geek/tech/web/early adopter/social media/first in line/I AM THE BRAND-obssessed.

Peter – I will agree with you that it is time game and folks will move towards the shiny new object. Both platforms have their clunkiness and should continue evolve. And if LinkedIn or Facebook does go away, then that’s OK. There will something new to take its place.

Amanda, Eric, & Andrew – Regards privacy, as our digital footprint grows, it will be harder to control our information so we all need to be aware of what we are posting and sharing as well as with whom. As a parent I’m struggling with that aspect. Facebook does change the privacy settings it seems a lot and I regularly check the settings making adjustments.

As with the others, I keep my personal life and private life separate with LinkedIn and Facebook. I don’t think LinkedIn will go away for a few reasons: Lead generation, people put a lot of time into creating and updating their profiles, and the groups serve a powerful thought leadership function and help function. (Not to mention the targeted marketing done in there).

I think LinkedIn will survive but become more like Facebook. Though with more employers asking to be Facebook “friends” so as to screen you for a job, I see Facebook as weakening.

Truth is people like their privacy, and some of the most fun, professional people I know don’t use it like they used to. Many are quiet now for fear of exposing too much information (that used to not be the case). Simply, Facebook stinks now. People are boring on purpose, and that will kill it.

Andrew, you’re killin’ me.

“Old people consider Facebook social” – or however you phrased it.

You know what happens to old people? THEY DIE. Just like the person who said “I’m not giving my employee a COMPUTER! So what, so he can play SOLITARE ALL DAY? HE DOESN’T NEED ONE!”

And the young kids with their “beer pong” (Seriously, Andrew, you sound like you’re hiking your pants up to your chest and shouting “get off my lawn!”) They’ll wise the hell up because they don’t have a choice.

CONVERGENCE is very real. Very, very real.

One last thought and I shall retire to the background… I’m been looking around the new Facebook profile format and I can see the value in the expanded education/work section (and failed to mention this in earlier comment.) I think it makes it easier for friends to see what you are doing professionally without them having to leave Facebook. This is helpful if you are in a job hunt and allow friends of friends to see it in your privacy settings.

I use them all, and promote them all. Facebook obviously is a leader for Clients needs and marketing. But linked in has a very direct approach for finding things – I had a client looking for a specific item and we could locate it through the groups in less than 10 minutes – it was fascinating, how simple it was to do. I have gotten referrals from Linked in through the groups that way as well. The groups have a very interesting way of working, if you understand how to use them and work within them to get your questions answered. For personal use, I prefer Facebook and try to keep the jokes and comments tame. Often I succeed.

Nathana Josephs Communications

Nathana Josephs President est. 1989

Couldn’t Disagree Further Shankman,

I actually think Twitter will get swallowed by Facebook well before LinkedIn. Twitter will be close to dead in 2 years; my not so bold prediction.

The only real question is, which will die first: Twitter or Blackberry?

I have to agree with Peter. I’m a journalist and author and have a couple of hundred Facebook “friends” who are also colleagues. I think we writers are the model for the future of Facebook because we’re so isolated and we depend on it for interaction. We are also the media and have a lot of influence. We friend each other if we have mutual friends (which everyone does) and share all kinds of personal and professional stuff. I’ve been able to get to know famous writers on Facebook I never could have met in any other way by participating in their personal threads, giving advice, schmoozing about books, movies, dogs etc. These connections are invaluable and I couldn’t have made them on LinkedIn which is useless for socializing. It’s incredibly frustrating to even follow a thread in one of their groups. I have no privacy settings on Facebook, make sure I don’t post anything embarrasing, but I do talk about my personal life and get and give advice. Even share recipes. This is what makes people feel like you’re their “friend” and if they know of an assignment they might consider you. That’s how networking works in the real world. You network with friends, not resumes on LinkedIn.

Normally I’m there with you, but not on this one. Facebook keeps demonstrating that it’s run by kids, for better and for worse. For every move like this one is another where they insist on putting your neighbor’s amateur pictures at the top of your profile page. LinkedIn’s boring culture is exactly why it will persist. (At least until us fogeys all die off.)

I use LinkedIn and FB very differently than most people probably, I don’t use it to scout for jobs. I manage groups for a not for profit and it works when recruiters want to approach our demographic with job offers. My recommendations on LI are almost completely about my volunteer work which shows my ability to work with others without a paycheck involved. That’s an important quality, when I look for employees, this would work in their favor. Shows that that person is not in it with a 9-5 attitude and that person is less likely to catch the 3:45 train when the boss leaves early.

I maintain completely separate profiles for my personal FB, volunteer work and my business/professional FB. You, Peter, are on my personal facebook. Good thing I have lots of pictures of my cat and decent wall posts because it would be a privilege to work for you, even as a volunteer. So back to my profiles: I don’t like professional contacts on my personal FB and personal on my professional. What I do in my personal life stays personal. And I don’t like people in my business unless they are business associates.

That’s why, while you can do no wrong in my eyes, Peter, I do not agree with this post. (Gulp). :)

sounds like an excellent feature! can’t wait to try it…i’ve never gotten much personally out of linkedin…especially for all that i put into it!

I agree with Peter about convergence — as a trend, but disagree that LinkedIn will be irrelevant in two years by simply losing out to Facebook.

Can’t wait to see how this plays out…Not sure I’ve ever strongly disagreed with Peter before. :-)

Peter, I completely agree with you.
Plus, I think there’s a simple way to keep professional and private life separate, without leaving FB: create a Facebook page for you professional info and keep you personal profile private.

One last thought: «If I look at your wall, and it’s filled with “Dude! That bong you brought to the party was amazing!” I’m probably not going to hire you, no matter how good your resume».
That’s a very north-american-esque way of thinking, in Europe it works different.
Compare the former President Bill Clinton, who was impeached for just one episode, to the Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who’s got a whole harem and is still in charge. In Europe we just don’t care about private life as much as you do in U.S.A.

Interesting to see this thread expand. There will always be those that hang back, resist change etc. The introverts of the world will never feel comfy putting themselves out in any arena & will do so as little as possible. The reality is there will be early adapters & those who will have to be dragged kicking & screaming along the path. Personal Branding is big to those who get it & can work it to their advantage, there will always be the trail blazers. Adapt or be consumed goes back to the evolution of life, people just talk about it now more. It’s always been the reality. And those “Duffers” who think kids running things is less than, well folks you wanna play in the park & have a say on the rules you better learn to play with them. Like attracts like & I wanna be playing with the people having the most fun!

My agreement is with Scott Swaney- the LinkedIn groups offer much more pertinent advice and dialogue regarding what I am seeking out.

Of course I think much depends upon what you’re seeking and how you are establishing your online presence. I don’t look at resumes, I don’t look to hire off LinkedIn and I don’t know anyone that does. However, some do. I prefer keeping my personal and professional lives separate as well.

Great thread…some thoughts: Can’t imagine Twitter getting swallowed by FB. There is no difference between your personal and professional lives, no matter how hard to you try: one side will see the others. FILTER your posts! Believe that everyone can see everything.

I have a hard time with LI. Not because I don’t connect with people on it; I do – but not to the extent that I do on FB. When I subscribe to LI groups I get inundated with more emails than I can digest, which means I am unable to fully engage with all the groups I’d like. It’d be a 24/7 job to do just that. I’m hanging on in LI hoping it’ll change and become more user-friendly…become more like…uh.. Facebook. But I don’t spend much time there.

Peter,
First I must say that I think you are genius. Not only because of your vast media ventures, but also because of this stirring LinkedIn vs. FaceBook debate.

I agree and disagree with you about LinkedIn and where it will be in 24 months. First, LinkedIn is a Goldmine to any business professional. I have personally used it for several years now. I have established several professional relationships through LinkedIn.

I use my Facebook account for personal use and LinkedIn for Business use. However, I see the need to make a change. I agree with you that nothing personal that you do not want to share with the world should be put on Facebook. That is why I am beginning to accept more friend requests on Facebook, but only after I am connected on LinkedIn.

The discussions on LinkedIn are so much more professionally focused. I am able to search people out due to their background. I am able to network with key contacts due to my associations. I am able to join groups with like minded people and engage in meaningful discussions on LinkedIn. The folks at LinkedIn have done a great job staying relevant for the business professional. I have confidence that they will continue to make improvements to LinkedIn over the course of the next 24 months to stay in the game. It is also a great tool for HR Professionals and Hiring Managers. It shows a potential employer how a person connects professionally online.

Facebook on the other hand, also shows a potential employer things about a job prospect – How they interact socially. I use this tool when I am looking at prospective candidates or business partners.

Facebook is fun, useful and engaging but for a different purpose than LinkedIn. There is enough room for both companies to survive in the online space many more years to come. However, I use LinkedIn on a very regular basis to grow business relationships. I could not imagine my life without it,

Thanks for igniting a great discussion on two very powerful online tools. You are a masterful instigator of lively, productive and thought provoking conversations. I enjoy reading your work. Keep up the good work.

Juliet

It depends on which industry you’re in. I work in an entrepreneurial company where your coworkers ARE your friends. When working on a startup, you can’t afford NOT to blur the lines. Why would I only tap into my “professional” network when I’m working on something I feel is going to change the way the restaurant industry works?

For some industries, lines aren’t blurred as much. If I’m a lawyer specializing in commercial litigation, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to bring that home with me every night. But if I’m trying to revolutionize the way people think about connecting worldwide, why not?! The lines will inevitably be blurred in an entrepreneurial environment, so I’m with Peter on this point.