Your reputation is one of the most valuable things that an Entrepreneur has.  It is important that entrepreneurs always be aware of how decision will affect their reputation.  Blogs that people write, comments on facebook, comments of discussion boards, twitter posts.  These can all come back to bite you in the butt.  Before the internet if your said something stupid the damage was minimal.  Probably only a few people would hear it and those people would probably wouldn’t know really be able to hurt you with the information.  Now, however, when people are applying for jobs or loans companies will perform searches on individuals and see what they can find.  People have been turned down for loans or not hired because of the information that was found on the internet.  The opposite can also be true companies can be impressed when they search for someone and only find good things about them.  It is important for Entrepreneurs to constantly be thinking about the information that they are putting on the internet about themselves.  Things on the internet never go away.  They are stored deep in cyber space and it can be found be whoever knows the right words to search.

I watched The Social Network this weekend, and was pleasantly surprised: I really enjoyed the movie.  Among a throng of other messages, the movie inspires one to get off of the couch (which is ironically where we are receiving this inspiration) and into the drawing room.  Mark Zuckerberg does not get broken up with then go back to his dorm and check Facebook.  He goes back to his dorm and makes Facebook (technically Facemash, Facebook came later. You get the idea).

Mark is an incredible programmer and a brilliant individual and takes advantage of his gifts on the internet.  He sees a potential market and develops the perfect product.  What are you good at?  What needs do you see that you and your website can fulfill?  Don’t sit on the couch and admire Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg; use your talents through your business, or you’ll be left speechless when a skeptical girl asks what what your latest “preneur” was.

Although I have had a facebook account for about 5 years now, I have not always been an “addict,” you know the guy always checking for new updates, writing a status about what I ate for dinner, or constantly hitting up my friends on FB chat. However once I got to college that started to change, not because I suddenly became more interested in the common features previously mention but I quickly found a new obsession that led me to login multiple times a day: flash games! These have started to consume my free time in ridiculous amounts. When I get onto the internet and have done my normal browsing around, I nearly always turn to the (I will admit it) stupid games. From family feud to farmville to data worm, these game have brought a new part of facebook to me that is all to addictive.

One of the main reasons I find these to be so enslaving is the competitiveness of always having the highest score of your friends. I will play for longer than I should, get the top score, take a while off thinking I am done with that game altogether, until a message pops up that my record has been broken….then sadly the cycle starts back over again.

Here is why this is good business, before every time you start a new game a 30 second advertisement pops up, something that you always dread seeing but of course am willing to wait it out to play again. While facebook does not have a whole lot of advertisements that  people often pay attention to, the games section is an exception. Also in some of the “story games” where you try and accumulate items over time they offer for you to buy (with real money) credits that get you new attributes that are not available without your credit card. Although I have not fell this deep in my obsessiveness, clearly others have. Facebook has now made over $350 million through these games.

Although a nontraditional revenue maker that most I am sure do not realize, facebook’s games are a profitable business creation.

Has Google lost its cool factor?

Expansion.  Growth.  Collapse?  You’ve probably asked yourself if Facebook is set to follow this pattern.  Or, if like Myspace, it shifts into a different focus (music) and rebrands itself.  You remember Myspace right?

It has become apparent that after years of exploding growth, “ceiling” is not a word Facebook worries about (or Lil’ Wayne for that matter).  Thanks to its easy layout, widespread growth, and multi-dimensional way of simply transferring your life to the digital realm, it’s here to stay.  We can bank on that in the near future as long as its absurd growth continues.

Looking at graph after graph of Facebook’s worldwide domination, it is obvious this monster has a new rival that originally, more than likely, was unexpected: Google.

That’s right, the Grand Daddy of them all – and both sides are bringing serious ammo to this fight.  After snatching up hundreds of those Silicon Valley types from the innovator incubator (Google), Zuckerberg is clearly aiming to take Facebook to the next level leaving Google behind as the dumped girlfriend you never were really THAT into.

How does this all work?  Google has been on a losing streak – Facebook, just can’t go wrong.  It’s not that Facebook doesn’t make mistakes, it’s that they continue to churn out new user-friendly products that are being gobbled up by a bigger and bigger audience – so the mistakes are seemingly forgotten by the majority of users. It  comes down to search, and though Google has dominated this field for years, data points to a shift in where users are spending their time.

Data doesn’t lie.

Facebook has become less of a networking tool and more of a pass time. Here are ten reasons why you should delete your Facebook:

10. Facebook’s terms of service are one-sided; The terms only look out for Facebook, they own all of the data that you put on your page.

9. Facebook CEOs have a history of unethical behaviors; If you have ever seen the movie Social Network then you know that the company was based on unethical actions.

8. Facebook has declared war on privacy; People are getting more comfortable with putting up information about themselves on their pages.

 7. Facebook is pulling a bait and switch; They are quietly telling users that they are able to access all of the “private” information on their pages.

6. Facebook is a bully; They make default settings something that users wouldn’t really want and you don’t think to go and change them so Facebook is taking advantage of you.

5. Private data is shared through applications; It doesn’t matter if your information is “private” on your page if you use some of the millions of applications your information is shared through the network of the application.

4. Facebook is not technically comptent to be trustworthy; There are many glitches in the program and it is easily hacked which can cause problems with your account.

3. Facebook made it difficult to delete your page; When you try and delete your account not all of your information is always deleted, sometimes the information pertaining to your applications stay online making it Facebook’s property.

2. Facebook doesn’t support the Open Web; It says it is a world wide web network but in reality it only supports other people who have Facebook accounts, there is no search that uses the rest of the internet.

1. The Facebook applications are not a good thing; How many application suggestions have you recieved since you created an account, the countless applications are a waste of time and just fill up your inbox.

All of these are valid reasons to not have a Facebook, although as stated before it is difficult to completley delete a Facebook account it is possible.

In the time that Facebook has been around, it has grown into the largest network in the world connecting more people than any other group. And yet it seems we’re all the more disconnected. What do I mean by that? I think it’s great that we can hop on FB and re-connect with friends from high school, old colleagues, or any other old “connection” that we had. But once we become “friends” again, do we actually believe we’ll talk again? Or is it a simple intention.

I think a lot of times people think that by using Facebook they will be able to be great friends again like in the past, but this isn’t the case. In an attempt to expand our networks and reach out to everyone we’ve ever known (including aunts and grandparents), we end up shallowing all our relationships and losing the deepest ones. The more time you spend on Facebook the less time you spend actually investing. By sending messages to 50 different people a day like “Hey how are you doing? It’s been so long!” you miss out on time with your current (real-life) friends.

Lots of people just spend an hour or so on Facebook a day, right? But think how that extra hour could have been spent with a close friend or spouse (and it’s even sadder when people actually communicate more on Facebook than in real life; that includes your good friends and–heaven forbid–your husband or wife). Of course this may be an “extreme” way of putting it.

If you’re like me then you check your account for about 5 minutes at the end of the day. You maybe look over a friend’s profile, leave a few comments and change your status. No harm no foul, and not a whole lot of time spent. But it’s important to remind yourself: Facebook is meant for low level, shallow conversations and catching up. The minute it starts to substitute real relationship, then that’s the moment you should probably log off forever.

And then go have a real life conversation with that friend you stopped spending as much time with.

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