Adriana Gascoigne

1.) It’s PRETTY: The UI, the easy-on-the-eyes “Intel” blue and clean lines make it easy to read, browse, and view what’s on your news feed and profile page. I also like the small, colorful app icons, photo icons and profile details . . . small, cute, concise.

2.)  And what a RESOURCE it is . . .:You can educate, comment, learn, share information by posting interesting blog entries, articles and videos.

3.) ARCHIVE my stuff!: Just like every other photo sharing and video distribution site out there, Facebook allows its users to archive an infinite (I think) amount of photos and videos on their profiles. There is also tagging features so you can highlight your friends or contacts in your network featured in photos or videos AND you can send your archived photos to friends, family or colleagues whenever you want, for years to come . . .

4.) Virtual NETWORKING on steroids: It’s crazy, but I’ve been able to recruit employees, conduct business deals, connect people and pitch reporters and bloggers via Facebook. Not that it’s the most ideal mode of communication to to do business in, however, it’s an easy, quick way to reach someone and refer someone should you need to hire a social media specialist yesterday (like I’m doing now!)

5.) Promotional tools for EVENTS: Facebook allows users to promote events, invite people to their events and keep track of who is attending through the social graph. It’s ideal if you’ve, for instance, started an organization called Girls in Tech and need to promote your events, but have no man or “woman” power to do so. Events also show up on your sidebar calendar and in your news feed.

6.) K.I.T. with friends and family: It’s super easy to keep in touch with high school friends, family and pretty much anyone on Facebook. Not only do you know what they’re up to based on what shows up on your news feed, but you can easily send anyone in your network, or multiple people in your network and email or a ping. It’s also simple to get in touch with specific subsets of people in your network by creating a group. This way you can send messages, post items, send pics, videos, whatevah to that specific subset of contacts!

7.)  INTUITIVE Intuition: Facebook is seamless in its very personalized and customized approach - It knows you you’re up to, what you like, what to advertise on your newsfeed (err . . . no comment on this one). It’s just cool, to know that a social network is “sensing” your behaviors, so that you don’t get random ads, but stuff that you truly can be interested in based on past transactional, browsing online behaviors.

8.) APPS-Gone-Wild: Anyone and everyone can be an application developer with Facebook’s open developer platform. It’s frikkin’ awesome, genius, and it has evoked so much creativity and entrepreneurialism amongst the masses, mainly kids in college . . . Quizzes, Friends for Sale, Easter Eggs apps were created by kids (even some that have dropped out of school . . .mums the word Eric!)

9.) $$Cha-ching$$: Facebook is a cash cow . . . maybe not HUGE returns right now, but with an existing network and audience - if your app does well, downloaded, shared, etc. you’re bound to make a ton of money on ad sales.  It’s a business . . . and probably the best, most nimble kind right now.

10.) Dave Morin: Last, but not least I have to highlight a good friend and all around awesome guy that has helped make Facebook what it is today - D-bone, D-dawg, D-nice . . . jk - Dave is a managing developer at Facebook and tours Silicon Valley and the world talking about how Facebook is evolving and taking over the world ;). He is as big-hearted, as he is smart and a nice dresser (surprised the heck outta me, since he’s from Montana

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.