The Facebook craze is something which even I was engulfed by and as soon as I think that Facebook may be about to die, Zuckerberg pulls something out of his sleeve and Facebook comes back live and kicking. Stepping out of the undying hype I can now see, however, that Facebook sucks and not normally, it sucks hard especially if you’re a freelancer. What fascinates people about flashing their pants at each other on Facebook and stalking their “friends” still baffles me but speaking from a business perspective, facebook does not help business at all.
Time
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In a 9 to 5 job an employee spends on average around 20% of their time surfing the net, of which the majority of that time is spent on Facebook. In fact if you calculated the time spent on Facebook on average, you would find that an employee spends nearly 12 working days on Facebook in a year.
As a freelancer, you are your business and cannot afford to procrastinate especially because of the competition which exists. For the sake of business one must rid themselves of those things which are detrimental to business survival and what better way to do it then killing Facebook? Of course, you need to get rid of Youtube and anything else which kills time, but Facebook is the most pending impediment to your business.
You need to constantly ask yourself throughout your business why you are doing what you are doing. If it is not productive to business then why do it? Look at Facebook and you will notice that there is nothing productive about it. It is social networking and nothing else.
So if something is not productive for business, is it worth socialising on Facebook in your free time?
Privacy
Facebook’s terms and conditions clearly state that everything you put on your profile belongs to Facebook. This may not effect business as such, but why would you share your videos and pictures of yourself and your family to a company called Facebook?
Facebook has recently tried to change their privacy settings to make them even worse and there was an uproar to which Facebook said they wouldn’t change their settings. What most of us don’t realise that the terms and conditions of Facebook at the moment are sinister enough already. Plus Facebook has been trying to secretly push through their new settings for so long that it shows that they are determined in their malice.
Go through your Facebook account and look at the sort of information which is displayed about you. If someone wanted to know something about you, all they need to do is look at your Facebook profile. Your photo, date of birth, full name and schools you attended are all on display. All anyone needs now is your mother’s maiden name and they can start scamming you and to get your mothers maiden name, they just need to do is add you as a friend!
No Real Networking
If you are still convinced that Facebook is worth using for networking then go through your friends list. How many people have you actually networked with compared to Twitter?
My Facebook friends list is full of family and friends. The number of people who I have added for business is minimal and it has never served in any real major way for business networking.
Action Point
Either delete your Facebook account (yes this is possible) if it is really effecting your work ethic or at least stop using Facebook while working. Remember, if it isn’t helping you, why participate? Now subscribe to our RSS while I update my Facebook status 
Places To Find Work For All Types of Freelancers
Elance – They have over 30,000 jobs posted. They also cover many different categories, almost any type of freelancer can find work here.
oDesk – With almost any set of skills you have, you should be able to find freelance work here. They have a wide variety of categories. This is a heavily posted website.
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