THE USAGE OF FACEBOOK FUNCTIONAL BUILDING BLOCKS IN UNISEL

The emergence of Internet-based social media has made it possible for a person to communicate with thousands of other people to increase the communication effectiveness, collaboration among internal organization and knowledge sharing. By engaging employees through social media such as Facebook as a two-way communications tool, employers can reach a larger audience and build credibility with techno-savvy workers. Although it is clear that Facebook is a very powerful tool for communication, many employers are unable to identify the functionality of Facebook in terms of developing strategies and to allocate the resources effectively. Taking this into account this study sought to identify the usage of Facebook Functionality building blocks. This survey involved 55 academic staffs from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Unisel. The seven functional building blocks identified were Identity (M=3.39), Relationships (M=3.39), Groups (M=3.6), Presence (M=3.28), Sharing (M=3.06), and Conversations (M=2.90), Reputation (M=2.05). This study suggests that the ability to identify the functional building blocks itself is very important in an organization in terms of developing their communication strategies. It is hoped that the results of the study will be applicable to the instituition, current users, and potential users of Facebook.