“Planet Facebook Owns It” is the title of my new column, now on WND. Here’s an excerpt:

“The more you hear from your average, financial-markets hater—the more you wish you could transport each one back to a mud hut in a far-away land, where women wear grass skirts, and carry their groceries on their heads, and where no man dares to or is capable of dreaming-up businesses like Costco, Overstock.com, or Facebook.

Planet Facebook, in particular, is a global, social, political, and potential economic revolution. Had the idea for this social-networking site not come into being, we’d be the poorer for it.

Facebook users love it and cannot imagine life without. Yes, they complain endlessly—but largely because they can. Unlike government (and CNN’s Anderson Cooper), you can keep private enterprise honest. Business aims to please its constituents, the consumers. Complaints encourage compliance.

Facebook went public. In the process of going public, some people got rich, or richer; others didn’t.

INDIVIDUALS VS. CORPORATIONS: To the media, these are two antagonistic and atomistic solitudes, never the twain shall meet. This ‘angels versus demons’ caricature is lapped up by the masses, even though most of them own shares in major American companies, through their pension funds.

Most Americans benefit from and are heavily vested in corporate America.

True to this cartoon, the Little Guy is depicted as good; Big Players as bad. Invariably, those who can’t get rich off an initial public offering (IPO) are labeled sympathetically as ‘small investors,’ or ‘retail investors.’ Those who land in the lap of luxury for the umpteenth time, because of their capacity to invest vast sums, are dubbed derisively ‘big investors,’ ‘Wall Street.’

SIMPLIFIED: People with oodles of money make a killing. People without much money would kill to be in their shoes.

U2’s Bono exemplifies the first type. Bono might be a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners, but he knows a good business deal when he sees one. In 2009, the singer invested $90 million in Facebook stock.

Cui bono, you ask. And the answer as to who benefits from Bono’s industry is this: The singer has pledged the $1.5 billion he reaped from his Facebook investment to charities in Africa.

Business, in contrast to Barack Obama, is a positive-sum game. …”

Read the complete column, “Planet Facebook Owns It,” now on WND.

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UPDATE I: Myron, “that FACEBOOK is overpriced” doesn’t contradict what I wrote, to the effect that “… prices are supposed to fluctuate continuously, as market forces bring supply and demand into balance.” Does it?

UPDATE II: To “Old Man”: I don’t hang out on Facebook, much less on twitter. Rather, I use social media quite efficiently to promote my work, only. I’ve gotten good at this efficiency. I waste no time at all, engaging in little extraneous discussion. In fact, when that “Hi, baby” chat window pops up at me (you can no longer disable the thing with ease), I “Unfriend” the creep right away.
For the little gal with no promotional assistance, Facebook is business. If you look at my pages, you’ll see that all my blogs propagate to Facebook and twitter (now, there’s a useless forum) mostly automatically through special applications interfaces. (Of course, these often malfunction, but not nearly as badly and as routinely as the government does.)
My book I advertised on Facebook, managing to reach 3 million pages, if I recall. That was a bit of creative work.
How cool is that? Very cool when you have no other promo support. As hard as it is to fathom, I’ve worked uphill to get my book out on Amazon, the Only Bookshop That Matters. As I noted in the “MAÑANA” blog post, “the softcover of The Cannibal is coming ‘Mañana,’ Pacific Time.” (The hardcover is available, for now.)
Although the soft-spined (but never spineless) Cannibal has been collated (in-house by myself and my husband) and features bonus material, its Publisher disavows Amazon, and is in no rush to supply the Only Store Worth Supplying with Cannibal softcover copies. (“After almost a decade in the Pacific Northwest region, I can safely say that, with a few treasured exceptions, people outside the Microsoft workforce (who, with Boeing, is the main employer here) have a hard time acting professionally and honorably.”)

So, yes, Facebook can be valuable for the Little Guy/Gal, who has no other option but to work it .

Incidentally, employers can, through Facebook, find out something about the bums they are about to employ. For example, I had employed a social media person, initially. This being America, the paid personnel rarely responded to my inquiries. Busy was she? Not on your life. She was chatting frivolously on Facebook, in real time, as I tried to reach her via email. Since then, three more potential “workers” have conducted themselves similarly. (It’s America. We are, for the most, unmotivated by obligation, professionalism, contract, intellectual honestly, or proprietary; but by how things make us feel. Doing the right thing we frame as an act of heroism.)

UPDATE (May 26): Thanks for your support for this work, Nell. As I said, the writer in this instance has no influence. Readers will have to use their clout to get the softcover issue to the Amazon market, where most readers prefer to shop. Do contact the publisher.