Facebook and the Workplace

Derek Blackadder writes at Canada's Straightgoods.ca (hat tip Work-related Blogs and News) that Facebook has become a medium through which many employees communicate about their workplace:

Facebook's public image as a space for discussing romance, connecting with old school chums and staying in touch with distant family members obscures the fact a hefty chunk of Facebook's regulars are people talking about work, in what the site calls 'networks'.  Workers who share a common employer, occupation, union or issues like health and safety concerns, are interacting on Facebook, creating networks, sharing insights and technical tips, venting, co-coordinating actions, and just generally doing good and useful things.  They're doing what we used to call 'self-organizing', online, and across huge distances in real-time. Were I a union organizer these days, I'd be fishing in Facebook, making sure the self-organized were aware of their options.

See Not Just Another Pretty Face(Book).

I think Facebook (and perhaps to a lesser extent, its blue collar equivalent, MySpace) will have another impact as well: by decreasing the transaction costs of employees communicating with each other, it decreases the information asymmetries between employers and employees.  In other words, Facebook will make it much less likely that an employer can run over a group of employees without paying a price in the labor marketplace.

rb