Even though I consider myself modern in how I dress and conduct myself, and am up-to-date with current events, I’m traditional in that I believe you are lucky if you have one or two real friends. More specifically, I am traditional in this social networking culture, i.e., I don’t have 700 “friends” on Facebook and I don’t tweet them every activity or thought in my day.
On the other hand, as some of you may know, we already have a personal Facebook page for our recruits. This gives us a chance to keep in touch and to learn about their latest goings-on – their vacation pictures, promotions, family news, and so on.
But when I read that Facebook now has 500 million users, and one of the Facebook devotees in our office suggested we expand our Facebook presence to reach a broader audience, I decided to hop more fully on the Facebook bandwagon (at least my company has). So we have set up our corporate Facebook page, where we hope our soon-to-be “fans” (the equivalent of “friends” on a personal page) can ask questions about working in the Middle East.
How is this different from calling/emailing us questions directly? It’s the modern way, and it’s more informal. You will get a variety of opinions. It allows curious people to be in touch not only with people who are also considering working in the Middle East, but who are currently, or were recently on-site in the Gulf. It allows people to ask personal interest questions, e.g., about the availability of cooking classes or the quality of the social life. This all fits in with my philosophy that the more you know, the better – especially about the potentially worrisome issues that come with working overseas. After all, you may get more “hardship stories” from people who are currently living it – but you’ll also hear how people overcame these hardships.
In conclusion, in support of my personal reluctance to expose myself on Facebook, I suggest you look at “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” by Jeffrey Rosen, published in the July 25, 2010 issue of The New York Times.
