Facebook, the Web’s State Fair vs. LinkedIn, the Chamber of Commerce
YAY? SUPER POKE Why just poke when you can pinch, hug, tickle, pwn or even throw sheep?
FLUFF FRIENDS Adopt a cute friend for your Facebook profile that your friends can pet and feed. 20 pets to choose from, Everybody could use a little cuteness.
WHAT’S YOUR STRIPPER NAME? Find out with this fun application.
DAILY BABE Get a daily BABE on your profile, updated every day with high-res pics.
HOW SEXY IS YOUR NAME CALCULATOR Type in your name and you get the score.
FOOD FIGHT Buy food from our cafeteria, then throw it all at your friends.
College game on then? NOT AT LINKEDIN, at least! Dan Nye, LinkedIn CEO has assured ”we’re not going to have people sending electronic hamburgers to each other.”
Nevertheless, Facebook faithfull insist that the Zuckerberg online party zone is causing an impending “extinction” of the online professional networking destination, LinkedIn! Despite the LinkedIn “death” wishes of ardent Facebook fans, however, LinkedIn is staying the lucrative, high-end professional networking course, while Facebook continues on its merry poking ways.
Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the closing panel of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development’s Tech 2007 Conference, along with Don Dodge, Microsoft, and Eric Auchard, Reuters, in the heart of Research Triangle, North Carolina. Following the conference, I experienced my first State Fair, in Raleigh. SEE CED Tech 2007: 30 Cool Startups, But NO Facebook Apps
The state fair evokes Facebook.
On Friday, October 12, my husband and I were two of the 57,798 fair goers that accepted the Commissioner of Agriculture’s invitation to have some “seriously twisted fun.” Why twisted? In honor of fair sponsor Subway’s “Seriously Twisted Sub.”
While the official goal of the ten-day extravaganza is to celebrate the agricultural heritage of the great state of North Carolina, the fair is above all an exercise in all-you-can-stand fried food and roller coasters. Despite the state’s impressive lineup of livestock exhibits, authentic tobacco stringing, a real-life blacksmith, a working corn meal mill, a steam-powered log cutter…the Raleigh press was keen on heralding the “Great American Midway” for 100 “thrilling” rides promising “screams and laughter” thanks to ”heart -pounding, jaw-dropping, three-shriek, edge-of-your-seat excitement” aka “seriously twisted fun” thanks, above all, to a never ending supply of fried concotions of every known variety.
Mark Zuckerberg offers the Web its own frivolous and fattening State Fair experience, in the guise of F8 applications. As I underscored last weekend though, Facebook Frenzy? Not So MySpace AND LinkedIn Fast.
Just as a State Fair’s juvenile entertainment can be fun for a few short days at a time, the Facebook college party time will also be short lived. State Chambers of Commerce live on, however, as the Web’s networked version may as well, LinkedIn.
PLUS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Reid Hoffman On How LinkedIn Beats Facebook for Business