I picked up some light reading over the weekend and learned a lot of useful information about Facebook that I never knew was available. The book is called I’m on Facebook - Now What??? by Jason Alba and Jesse Stay.  Jason, who is one of the contributors to the Qvisory blog, specializes in career technologies, and Jesse is a self-proclaimed social media guru. Together, they provide an in-depth and useful guide to using Facebook to network and enhance your career.

Here are some of the highlights I found in the book:

• To make Facebook the most useful for you, spend time creating a complete profile and make sure that your privacy settings are where you want them to be.  Once you’ve done that, get involved in the culture of Facebook by writing on friends’ Walls, sharing pictures, and maybe even adding some applications.  If you want to get more involved after that, you can then start working on growing your network, setting up Events and inviting friends to attend, and joining and setting up groups.
• There are some applications that can be useful for business users.  Here are a few you might want to look into if you are thinking of using Facebook at work: Linking Universe (developed to help qualify your friends by assigning a score to rate how strong they are as business contacts; also helps you build a resume on Facebook, create a business profile, and interact with friends in a business-oriented way), Twitter (could be useful for Facebook users who are working remotely on a team project. Every time you update your Twitter feed, it changes your status on Facebook. This makes it easy for teammates to keep up with one another), and My Questions (gives you the opportunity to post questions for friends to answer. This could be a great way to do market research or ask for general work advice.)
• Facebook is not all positive, however, and the book provided some things to watch out for.  For example, I was not aware that my information, and even my friends’ information, is available to any application I install.  Privacy rules require that application developers not store this information longer than 24 hours, but it’s difficult for Facebook to keep track of which developers comply and which ones bend the rules.  Once I found that out, I removed my birthday and hometown from my public profile.
• The book had some great ideas for ways that employees could use Facebook productively at work.  Some of my favorite tips were setting up a group for your coworkers to easily let them know about project updates and meetings, connecting with others in your field, and sharing documentation using notes, posted items, and photos.
• The thing that stuck out to me most in the book was the reminder that everything you do is viewable to your friends, so watch what you say and post.  If you post a comment or write on someone’s Wall, make sure it’s something you don’t mind everyone else in your network knowing.  The book provided numerous examples of people who forgot this rule and ended up sorely regretting it.

I’d recommend the book to anyone who is curious about getting the most out of Facebook professionally and personally.  It does an excellent job of walking the reader through the steps and features, and makes it easy to avoid the common pitfalls.

As I’ve mentioned before, Facebook can be a fun diversion, but needs to be done responsibly lest it affect your career.  It’s one thing to throw a sheep, but quite another to lose your job because of an offensive bumper sticker.