Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook

Facebook has helped a lot to create a personal brand for many individuals and for businesses. Moreover, it’s a major source of entertainment for people around the globe. Since, Facebook is a global social networking site available in various languages, country and language is not a barrier. Also, with the Facebook translation feature, you will never miss out on connecting with Facebook users from different countries and with people who speaks different languages.

The Advantages of Facebook:

Facebook, with 900+ million active users, holds a great deal of advantages. You can use it for your personal growth, professional growth or none the less you can use it to find a job for you. As I mentioned above there are many advantages and disadvantages of Facebook, So lets start with some of the advantages of Facebook.

Facebook for Networking:

No doubt, Facebook is the most powerful social media and social networking site. You can use Facebook to connect with your family, friends, work colleague and to meet new people. This is the best way to find your school, college or any other old profile. Most of the people who know how to use a computer and internet, have a profile on Facebook. Moreover, it’s easy to find like-minded people by seeing their interests, and you can easily connect with them using wall updates, private message, poke or text, and video chat.

Facebook for Dating:

Facebook is also famous for finding a date.  College students and youngsters are using Facebook for dating and to make new friends. Indeed, with a social networking powered by over 900+million active users, it’s easy to find a date for yourself that shares common interest and hobbies. This way, most of the time you don’t get into the issues of in-compatibility. (Most of the time.)

One should be careful about fake Facebook profiles though, as they are usually created by stalkers or spammers. According to reports, Facebook is also becoming one of the major reasons for failed relationship and breakup’s. So make sure, you use Facebook as a useful tool, and don’t misuse the networking power of Facebook.

Facebook for business:

Talking about Facebook advantages for business, it’s one of the largest site in the world where we are allowed to connect to everyone. Anyone, can take advantage of Facebook to maintain a good relationship with others, who identify with certain tastes or products. This is very important, because later you can sell a product or promote products or services, thus increasing the possibilities of making money on the Internet. Facebook allows the establishment of partnerships between various projects. Moreover, using a Facebook fan page, you can increase your brand value and social media presence for your business. Facebook, helps you to find new leads and client, if you use it properly.

Facebook video chatting:

Facebook can also be used as video chat tool. Recently Facebook implemented Facebook video chat feature in partnership with Skype, and now you can make video calls to your friends using the Facebook inbuilt video chat app. In case if you are not aware of it, check out how to set up Facebook video chat.

Facebook as an Image or video hosting site:

You can also use Facebook as an image or video hosting site. You can set privacy for individual album to make your video and image collection private or public. Moreover, you can always download your complete collection of Facebook photos and videos using the Facebook backup account feature.

Facebook as source of information & news:

Talking about positives of Facebook, it’s a real-time social networking site and it’s one of the best sources to stay updated with latest news and updates. Major news usually goes viral on Facebook and you will not miss important updates. Bloggers and Internet marketers can subscribe to popular blog Fan pages and keep themselves up with latest updates. In fact, I have one profile just to gather news. You can see our article on RSS graffiti, which will give you an idea of how you can use Facebook as a personal RSS reader.

Facebook as personal portfolio:

Facebook timeline gives a completely new look in terms of your personal profile branding. With the Facebook timeline cover, you can easily create your first impression or you can be creative and you can use the cover pic to tell people about yourself. Also, you can set your certain updates as public and if done strategically, you can use it as your portfolio. For example, if you want people to recognize you as a Facebook business expert (provided you are one),  you can set privacy to public for your most commented and liked “Facebook for business tips, articles and discussions”. This way all your new profile visitors will see your expertise, and will be connecting with you because of your useful and targeted updates. This will also help you to get more subscribers and also help you to get clients as well.

The disadvantages of Facebook:

Facebook privacy:

One of the major concern and disadvantage of the Facebook is to do with Facebook privacy. In the past, it has created many buzz due to sudden changes in Fb privacy settings but now Facebook has simplified it’s privacy setting. Due to ignorance and lack of understanding of Facebook privacy feature, people make many mistakes.  Another situation to consider has to do with the availability of information too personal, whether in video, pictures or text. Never give out too much personal information. As throughout the Internet, we should bear in mind the privacy of your personal data, because after they are placed online lose your control.

Private status published as Publicly:

One of the most prominent disadvantages of Facebook is your privacy on Facebook. Later on Facebook simplified the Facebook privacy, but still many newbie make mistakes by publishing private images and status update publicly. Also, people usually keep their Facebook friend list visible to public, and this helps Facebook stalkers to find more information about you. You can read our guide on how to hide Facebook friend list from others.

Fake Facebook profile:

Facebook is full of fake profiles of girls and guys. You will find tons of fake Facebook profile with beautiful profile picture of a girl. There is no limit to such profile, and most of them are created by stalkers or by marketers to gain more friends and use it for their marketing purposes. There are many ways by which you can find a Fake Facebook profile, which we will cover in upcoming article.

Not using Facebook list feature:

Many users still don’t use Facebook list feature which is very helpful to keep your status updates targeted to specific friend list, like College friends, Office friends and so on. I’m sure you might not like to get fired from your job because of silly status updates against your boss or office. If you are new to Facebook list, read our guide on: How to use Facebook list.

Time-consuming:

Of all the Facebook disadvantages, I believe this is one of the major reasons why people deactivate or delete their Facebook profile. Being, one of the best way to know what your friends are up to, people spend too much time on this social networking site. Facebook offers many entertainment applications and games which engage users to a great extent. Apart from that, Facebook chat and Facebook video chat are another two-time consuming feature. If you want to use Facebook for your advantages, use it for specific time-limit in a day. Spending too much time on Facebook, might make you a Facebook addict, and you might end up wasting too much time on Fb.