No friends, no problem

You"ve got enough on your plate to worry about—producing quality parts, shipping those parts out on time, chasing new business, addressing issues with employees, and getting home in time to grab some sleep before the cycle begins all over again. Well, here"s one thing you don"t have to worry about: social media.


Some call it Web 2.0—a term coined by a tech industry guru to describe how the Web had evolved to allow for more self-publishing and sharing of online content. Some recognize it by more familiar names such as MySpace and Facebook. Some are calling the whole shebang over.



See, that"s one less thing for you to worry about.



Not that social media would have revolutionized a metal fabricating business, but I"m sure some business managers had that same thought in the late 1990s as they scoffed at the time-waster known as the Internet. Can you imagine existing today without a Web site? I"m still dumbfounded by shops that don"t have Web sites with pictures of their projects, a means to submit requests for quotes, and a thorough explanation of their capabilities. At least, they don"t have to be on Facebook.



Ah, Facebook—that was my social media experiment for the last couple of weeknights. My college roommate sent me an e-mail saying that I needed to get on Facebook because he had some important news on there. I sign up, plug in some information, set up a quick Facebook home, and friend my friend.



Yes, friend is now a verb, like google is now a verb. (English teachers are jumping from bridges as I write this.) It basically means to reach out to someone you know and let that friend know that you want to be linked to his or her Facebook page. You end up creating a community of people you know or, in some cases, you have briefly met in a drunken stupor at Arby"s at 1 a.m.



What was my buddy"s news? He was getting married. He didn"t tell me this in his original e-mail. He didn"t bother to pick up the phone. I had to check his Facebook page.



Actually, I wish more people had important news like that. Here are some posts that some of my friends have put on their Facebook pages in recent days:

• [Friend A] is hopeful today. Anxious, but hopeful.


• [Friend B] is excited for a night out with his wife.


• [Friend C] is getting ready to watch the Illini put a smackdown on the Badgers. (As a friend of his posted Friday morning: It"s better to gloat than to predict.)

Honestly, it"s that simplistic. I can"t see where this is going to be the cornerstone of some major marketing campaign for a metal fabricating shop, much less a major television network.

In fact, if you do a search for metal fabricating in all Facebook pages, you come across a bunch of pages for hot-rod enthusiasts and two pages for the country of Lebanonthose are pages promoting the country"s economic activities, which I guess include metal fabricating. I didn"t see any pages for a company or a manufacturing association.

So rest comfortably knowing that you can live without Facebook and its other Web 2.0 relatives. Web 1.0 still works well for the metal fabricating community.