I'm on Facebook - Help!

In the "teaching old dogs new tricks" department, I've just put up a page on Facebook. I also started a group called Information Arbitrage (surprise, surprise). I guess each summer I need to establish a new web presence. Last year, it was starting a blog. This summer, it is building a presence on Facebook. Next year, who knows?

But this post is also a call for assistance. Please come and visit my page, become a friend, join my group, whatever. But even more importantly, I'd love any suggestions, insights or perspectives about how to get the most out of Facebook: what I should be doing with my page, my group, how to network and leverage other groups, etc. I am a neophyte at best and a complete idiot at worst, so your comments and thoughts would be much appreciated. See you on Facebook.

Comments

[AnitoKid]

Just joined your Facebook community, my friend. And oh! do check out this post - could be an interesting read. :)

The link is at:
http://anitokid.blogspot.com/2007/07/worlds-top-10-richest-people-in-tech.html

[Chris]

Byrne,
There are a few portfolio/mock stock market apps. A friend of mine is working on this one, which I think is the best so far:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=c64728d8b79375f4622df5c4269b861a

[Yaser Anwar]

I think Michael Parekh has almost every single useful application. So each time I want to add an application or find one, I just check his page!

Facebook, on a comps basis w/ Myspace/Orkut et al, has a much neater and better interface. Not only that, there are some very good groups to network on whatever one's taste.

I would like to invite everyone (if you don't mind Sir) to join Wall Street Networking
http://yorku.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2239458607

Its the premier group for Finance, especially students looking for more info- I've reprinted most of Roger's fabulous articles on Career advice there, with a link back of course, that should help anyone looking to find out more.

A lot easier to find and network with people in different industries and schools- something not possible in other social networking sites. I've utilized it to increase my weekly institutional newsletter's awareness, and I agree w/ Jed that its more than a social networking site.

Thank you, Yaser

[Byrne]

Facebook is great at staying minimal (and offering very fine-grained control over what's private and to whom), so the main leverage it offers is in keeping people away.

However, there are some new Facebook apps out there that might 1) give you an idea of the flavor of some newer startups, and 2) might be helpful for sharing information and integrating Facebook with other services. I'm a big fan of the del.icio.us app, which pipes a list of my latest links straight into my profile.

Unfortunately, nobody has written a good stock quoting/portfolio tracking system.

[Jed Christiansen]

I've found Facebook to be much more a social network, since it was for so long exclusively open to current students. (Lots of photos of drunk teens, etc.) People in their 30s and 40s are starting to use it as a hybrid social/professional networking tool, but any younger than that and it's largely party invites and the like.

It should be fun enough to play around with, but I wouldn't expect to get much value out of it.

[Daniel Goldberg]

One thing to remember is the noise to sound ratio is even worse on these sites. You can get around it by being strict with who you allow as a friend, and so forth, but thats losing the benefit of such as a site. I don't have any idea what else I can reccomend because I'm not percisely sure what your goal with this group/personal page is.