Jason Calacanis took over Techmeme this weekend by raising the questions, or should I say stating emphatically that he was tired of Facebook. You see, his problem was that he was being overloaded with friend requests, application request, event invitations, cause invitations and messages from people he didn’t care about. Honestly, I feel a portion of his pain but that of course doesn’t answer the question.

Facebook

Question: “Is Facebook worth the time it takes to manage it?”

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I refuse to check my own profile more than once every several days — I have to say, it is. All the linkbait potential of an article mentioning “Facebook” and “Bankruptcy” in the same title aside, Jason must know that of course it is worth it! All the people who take the time to stalk Mr. Calacanis on Facebook have one thing in common, they are interested in knowing what he is doing.

How can this help someone who like Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble and a slew of other weblebrities relies on mindshare for his daily bread? Lets look at it as a numbers game for a moment. Lets say that, on average, 1 percent of the people exposed to any stimuli will act on it. The more people that you have on the receiving end of this stimuli, the bigger your impact will be. Email Marketers have known this for ages, and many would kill for a group of people actively seeking to Opt-In to their lives.

Of course, you could argue that none of these people have any real value for someone like Jason, but if so why court them on Twitter or LinkedIn or any of the dozens of other social networks that he is a member of? It’s because there is always a chance that one of them will be able to expose him to an opportunity he would have otherwise missed. Facebook is not a system that anyone needs, so concerning yourself with signal vs. noise is a bit inappropriate. If you’re really interested in meaningful communication over a distance then use the phone or email.

Consider your Facebook profile your fan club and you’re beginning to understand its potential a bit better. You can use it as a platform for casual communication with people who are interested in you, or even use it as a launchpad for more meaningful discussion should something catch your fancy. That’s the secret and about all this iteration of Facebook is good for.

Web 2.0 Roundup

My answer to Jason is this, give Facebook as much maintenance as it deserves and you’ll soon find that you are not as overloaded as you believe you are. Use Facebook as a platform to spread whatever message you would spread on a network like Twitter and you’ll discover that it is, in fact, a great tool. Of course, he already knew these things but c’est la vie.