I have read many articles lately about the impending digital takeover. Amber Case, founder of Geoloqui.com and a keynote speaker at the South by Southwest Convention, recently compared people who use up-to-date technology, as cyborgs. Neither I nor she believes an IRobot-type doom is impending, however, reading “The Next Generation of Student Support Systems” article on Higher Ed Live led me to question just how fast are students becoming technology dependent?

Last week I chatted with a man who grew up around the time of the first electronic digital computer. I was in my elementary school computer class when I first used a computer. My point is that everyone can say some form of the phrase “I was born before the (insert technological device here) was invented,” but is there a point where we won’t be able to reverse our dependence on the technology we've grown up using? Has this point in time already passed?

In my freshmen year of high school my English teacher assigned us a project while reading 1984. We were to stop using technology for a week. Yes, an entire week. No phones. No television. No computer. For the first couple of days I did very well…then I gave up. I tried this again over this past week as it was Spring Break and did surprisingly well. Being aboard a cruise ship without service definitely helped, but I did realize what Amber Case pointed out in her speech: “the best technology is invisible and just gets out of your way to let you live your life.”

So my questions for you are: Are you busy fiddling around with your apps and social media websites while life is happening around you? Or can you put the smartphone down for an hour or two each week, go out with friends and enjoy it before the cyborgs takeover?

Facebook is all around us, and ever since Facebook pages have been redesigned to look more like Facebook profiles, they have been gaining a lot of attention from small organizations and big companies alike.  I’ve been giving it some thought and for 80-90% of websites out there, it makes sense to make their Facebook Page the primary mode of communication and elivery of whatever value they have to offer.

I came across a great blog post titled “The Facebook Page is the New Website” and the author outlines 4 reasons to back up the claim:

1. Facebook has the numbers and loyalty

2. Searches WITHIN Facebook continue to grow

3. Facebook isn’t just for young people anymore

4. People use Facebook to organize

——-I’ll add 2 reasons – SEO & EASE OF USE.

5. SEO - Search Engine Optimization is great for fan pages.  These pages get very high ranking on Google searches, which means you spend less time having to worry about optimizing your website.  By the way, here’s a list of Facebook Fan Page SEO strategies to optimize your fan page for Google searches.

6. EASE OF USE – Here’s the big one in my eyes.  The new web is about giving everyone a voice, not just those that work at the big PR firms.  Anyone with a laptop can wield enormous power that a decade ago would have been unthinkable.  Same goes for websites vs. fan pages.  Very few people actually know how to develop a website, and its a big cash outlay to pay for development.  And once you have the site how you want it, it will often go dead since you don’t want to pay for little upgrades here and there.  I know many sites that haven’t been updated in over 3 years because of this. 

What a Facebook Page allows you to do is 1)easily setup an online presence for free that 2)looks professional and 3) you can easily update whenever you want.  Now I know, most of the fan pages out there may not seem top of the line professional.  True, you are never going to have fan pages that look like professionaly developed websites.  However for those that just need an online presence to give information and have conversations, fan pages are it.  Plus, you can always do something like what BMW of Minnetonka did, this is a great example of a fan page, and they integrated some cool functionality pieces for inventory. 

The key to making the fan page your own is the static fbml application, which you add to your fan page.  What this does is allow you to add as many custom tabs as you’d like, where you have a blank canvas to place any html code you’d like.  This gives you the flexibility that normally fan pages don’t provide.

It’s quite plausible that as Facebook becomes more and more pervasive throughout the world, many businesses will start making their fan page a substitute to any kind of external website, not a complement to the site.  And if they still want a professional e-mail and web presence, then simply buy the domain, and have it forward to your Facebook Page.

Now this is certainly not appropriate for every business.  Many will need to have a separate website if their functionality is delivered through their site, however if you are using the site as an advertising, sales, informational tool, I urge you to think ahead of the curve and make your fan page a key aspect of your business, and maybe the only website you’ll ever need.