textiplication.com

Dennis Howlett’s filling in for Dan Farber over at ZdNet, and he’s waxing enthusiastic and interesting on the utility of Facebook in the enterprise. I buy it, for the most part. Facebook has a lot going for it compared to MySpace, for instance; much better look and feel, no creepy dating/escort service ads.

But in a real enterprise tool, this wouldn’t be the page where you enter your profile:

When you’re first registering with Facebook just to see if it has any use for you in the business world, it’s offputting to be asked for your relationship status. [As hard as I laughed at the last option: "It's complicated!"] I think the site will have to do some persona analysis to support users who graduate, who are joining decades after college, and so on. You should be able to flag yourself as a student, a professional, and so on, with the site UI changing to accommodate your needs.

I think HR folks might find it pretty problematic for a manager to ask his/her team to use this offering, even with an appropriate disclaimer.

It’s not a game breaker, but it’s always jarring to find out how badly a piece of software misunderstands what you want.

There’s probably an app to write in there, a business to start…for someone.