Like a lot of other people, I have struggled to make Facebook work for me as a career building tool. Facebook is a huge social network, and it would be nice to take advantage of the size for professional networking. There just doesn’t seem to be any good way to do it. Many people have created fan pages as a way to lead a double life on Facebook, saving their public interactions for their page rather than their profile. I too tried that.  The problem is that nobody ever sees my page. Even if you clicked the link on my blog, you had to log in to Facebook before you could see the page. Then you can click “Like” or maybe comment on a post, and that’s pretty much the end of it.

Google+ is still pretty new, and still kind of empty compared to Facebook or Twitter, but it has a lot of potential. G+ lets people interact with me personally, rather than a page about me. The interactions can be public, shared with a limited group, or private. All I wanted to do on Facebook was share stuff like links and photos quickly, and let other people share with me too. With a little more development, I think Google+ could replace my Facebook page, Twitter stream, and You Tube channel. All it needs is users.

Since my Facebook fan page really never had users, I don’t see the point in keeping it. It’s gone. As long as my friends are using Facebook, I will keep using my profile, but the fan page was useless. For public or professional networking, I will start over with Google+. In fact, I kind of hope this is the beginning of the end for fan pages, and the senseless over use of the “Like” button in advertising.