Two more case studies

In the interest of investigating how non-collegiates use Facebook ‘in real life,’ I sent two personal associates – one, a friend in my community and the other, a business contact – a few questions about their use of Facebook.

I asked:
1)Do you use Facebook for work (either for job tasks or professional networking)? If so, how? Is it useful?
2)Do you use Facebook to stay in touch with close friends? If yes how? Is it useful?
3)Do you use Facebook to re-establish contact w/old friends? If yes, how? Is Facebook better than other methods for this?
4)How else do you use Facebook?

Here’s what I learned.

Julie McGee Verbaro is the vice president for sales at a printing company based in northern New Jersey. She wrote:

I only use Facebook for social reasons only. For networking I would use LINKED-IN (I think that's what its called). I am on that but hardly ever use it.

I love finding old friends from college and keeping in touch with current friends on day to day stuff - love looking at photos and letting them know what is new with me instead of emailing everyone. it's a one stop shop!

I have also been contacted by friends of friends and now I am close with them too. It’s really fun.

I send birthday cards on Facebook so now I don't forget friend’s birthdays, I try out some of the quizzes and am learning about more features each time I go on.

Avi Mandelbaum works for a local outlet of a major national pharmacy chain. He wrote:

No I haven't used Facebook for my regular job. However, when I was working last year as Youth Director (of a local synagogue), I was able to create a Facebook group only for the synagogue’s youth. This group was very helpful getting information about events to our target demographic. It was much easier than calling, and more effective than mail because of the automatic reminders facebook has.

I don't use it for staying in touch with close friends. Close friends get phone calls, and face to face treatment. While I do communicate over Facebook with my close friend, I wouldn't say it is to "stay in touch."

I've been able to find many friends from Elem. School, High School, Yeshiva (religious school) in Israel, and my college days, and my days in N.C.S.Y. (National Council of Synagogue Youth – a synagogue –based youth program for teenagers). I wouldn't have found them any other way. I find them by looking through lists of friends of people who I'm already friends with, and just searching for people wondering what they're up to. I do think it's preferable because I, and they, can post life cycle events (children, birthdays and the such) and keep large amounts of people in the loop. Without that, calling everyone would take too long, mailing letters or cards too expensive. E-mail could do the same, but you wouldn't have a way to find everyone's e-mail address. Also, with the "news feed" you can keep up on status updates from friends, and are able to know what they've got going on, and the other way around. It's really nice.

I use some of the games, movie trivia, parking wars, and I also use the photo posting sections. Most of these are to simply allow my friends to know what's going on in my life, and in the life of my family.