How I Re-Embraced Facebook (and How You Can, Too!)

If they don’t still live in the same town they grew up in, many people at least have the luxury of “going home” for holidays and visits where they can run into old school friends at the grocery store and hear the latest details of the star high school quarterback’s minimum wage job and fourth illegitimate child.

I, on the other hand, went to boarding school, and with the sole exception of New York City, no two of my friends live in remotely the same place. This made keeping up and keeping track a challenge from the day I left — a challenge that I’m sure many others experienced a few years later upon college graduations.

Enter Facebook. It was the perfect place to keep track of everyone’s latest location, job, relationship status, and cell phone number, without having to experience the pain that comes with looking at or listening to a MySpace profile. (It was especially perfect in the early months when they let you export your contacts’ information as a CSV file! Oh, those were the days…)

Over time, Facebook grew, and in stark opposition to the rest of the planet, my daily page views shrunk as the total number of users went up. I was friends with one, two, then ten people I wasn’t *really* friends with. I questioned whether or not to post certain things in my profile or put up certain photographs. Worse, I noticed that people were including less and less personal contact information in their profiles — and what good is it to know you live in Manhattan if I have no way of reaching you besides your Wall when I’m in the city for an afternoon?

Then, there were the Facebook apps that grew plants and hatched eggs. Let’s not even talk about those.

A year ago, I installed a browser plugin to block my access to Facebook during certain hours so it wouldn’t hinder my productivity. Last week, I realized that since upgrading to Leopard, I hadn’t even bothered to make a Facebook shortcut in Firefox.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Last night, I had an epiphany, and I am once again a happy Facebook user.

Create a Second Facebook Account

I now have one personal account, and one professional account.

I’m aware that I could restrict access to certain content within my profile to certain user groups, which I thought was my original concern. However, once I created a professional profile, I realized that I was using it in an entirely different way than I was using my earlier profile.

As an efficiency consultant, I hate clutter, and I prefer to only receive information pertinent to my needs. My professional connections don’t need to know about the dinner and drinks I’m having with my old high school friends, and my old high school friends aren’t going to run into me at any of the 10 Upcoming events I’ll be at in Seattle. Now that I have two profiles, I can display relevant information to each of the two groups, and only relevant information.

Some key differences:

Personal Profile

• My “About Me” section is more casual and personal.
• My “Work Info” is more broad.
• My “Quotations” are more personal and include inside jokes.
• I’m in silly groups like “Pastafarians”
• My personal cell phone number and home address are listed.

Professional Profile

• My “About Me” section specifically addresses my business and what I have to offer others.
• My “Work Info” is more specific.
• My “Quotations” are motivational and inspirational.
• My “Favorite Books/Movies” double as suggestions for business colleagues.
• I’m in more professional groups like GTD or Web 2.0.
• My Grand Central number and post office box are listed.

So, if Facebook has lost some of its luster for you, try starting fresh with a new professional profile and leaving the growing plants for your friends, who will love you anyway.

TIP: Set your privacy settings for your personal account so that it doesn’t show up in search results. If a personal friend initiates a friend request to your professional account, simply ignore that request and initiate a new friend request from your private personal account. This will eliminate confusion *and* won’t broadcast to the world that you really have two separate profiles!

Add me on Facebook!

How do you use Facebook? I’d love to hear in the comments!