Facebook is the world’s greatest social tool.  Ever since February 2004, this website has been growing and growing.  It started as a resource purely for students at Harvard University, developed by Mark Zuckerberg.  Over time, it was expanded to all Ivy League schools, and then eventually it was released to the public.  Most people see Facebook as a fun website to talk to their friends, look through pictures, and throw around fun “bumper stickers”  But what you don’t know is that your Facebook profile is slowly being sucked into the real world.  At college and job interviews, the interviewer will often click to your profile to get a better feel about who you are outside of the work environment… which can either be a really good thing, or it could be a really big problem.  If you have a relatively clean profile, nice pictures, some good ambitious things written in your info section, and conversations with plenty of people to show that you’re not socially inept, chances are it will impress the interviewer very much… but if your profile is made up of pictures of you half naked with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other, unless thats the field your planning to go into, it will most likely hurt your chances of getting accepted for that college or job position.

In addition to being used to see who you are as a person, many companies are using Facebook as a way to reach out to people.  A few months back I was working for a college housing company named Sweet Spot Housing.  The specific job I was hired to do was maintain their Facebook.  SSH used Facebook to advertise and recruit people to live in their locations.  Until then, I had no idea that Facebook was such a widely used tool… and every day I notice more and more ways it is being used for work.  I’ve noticed that many companies have their own networks that they use to be able to easily communicate with anyone within the company who has a Facebook profile.  Here’s an example:

Let’s say that there is a big presentation tomorrow that will determine if your company gets funded that extra 10 million dollars they need to expand… and the day before the conference, your boss paired you up with someone you barely know.  So you go home, write down the points you want to bring up on an index card and then suddenly realize after you decide what needs to be done, you have no way of contacting your new partner because you forgot to ask for their phone number or email address.  You’re life is over.  Or is it?  If your company has a network set up on Facebook you can quickly run to your computer, search for your partners name within the network, go to his personal info, grab his phone number, and give him a call.  Crisis averted.

Those are just a few ways that Facebook is evolving into a tool that is much greater than connecting students from different schools.  So if you don’t have a Facebook profile, I suggest you go ahead and make one right now, because in today’s world, it’s almost impossible to get by without one.