Facebook profiles at Work is another Step in the Social Web (Web 2.0)

Implications: Employees posting full profiles at work certainly poses dangers to employees, should they be arrogantly drawn and rudely sketched. But this and other elements of the Social Web allow for benefits to both employee and employer.  More importantly, this two-way conversation is inevitable, so it is better to embrace and understand as opposed to ignore.

Analysis: The Web is quickly becoming a two-way, open communication vehicle -- or Web 2.0, the onset of the social web.  Facebook is both a function of and a contribution to the spread of this open conversation.

Brands and companies are embracing this new Web (or not embracing it) at various speeds.  Some companies are rejecting this open communication, fiercely holding onto the old ad paradigm whereby a brand or company designs and delivers a message of its own making and hopes, prays, and tests its resonance.

Other brands and companies are both understanding that the move toward the two-way open conversation is inevitable -- and it provides great opportunities to the companies that take advantage of it.  These companies are embracing user feedback and reviews, which has been proven to increase sales for e-retailers.  These companies are using wikis and employee forums to develop internal handbooks and policies.  These firms are allowing for negative feedback to be published and then addressing this feedback proactively and positively instead of squashing it.  These companies have senior managers and CEOs who write open blogs.

Consumers and employees are posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.  Sometimes, especially early on when no one realized that the wrong people could be reading the posts, users posted things that they shouldn't have.  Now, it is a gradual climb to smarter postings, ones that provide input as opposed to Toga-clad pictures and illicit behavior.

So, the move to companies that embrace Facebook profiles and users who post useful info is also inevitable.  This is the open Web.  The importance is to then extend this open-ness into useful elements for companies, such as R&D by run-of-the-mill employees, social networks to lower the cost for research, using the crowd for self-customer service, and so on.

This is the Web.  Either accept it, strategize, and grow ... or ignore it and fall behind.