About two months ago, during a routine update of my LinkedIn profile, I sent out a fresh email blast to friends and contacts. The acceptances trickled in over the next few days, along with a dismissive note from an ex-colleague, a tech journalist in San Francisco.

“Dude,” he wrote. “You must get on Facebook. LinkedIn is over.”

I regarded his prediction as overly harsh. I had signed up for a Facebook account late last year, but barely touched it, thinking it was the domain of beer-soaked university students and stalkers. At least this is the response I get whenever I make reference to “Facebook” during my university lectures. My students regard anybody over the age of 25 lurking on Facebook as a “perv.”

But now, a respected fellow geek from San Francisco was giving me the green light. “Come on in. The water is fine,” he seemed to be saying. It was a hot tub invitation I couldn’t refuse. My students would just have to get used to the idea their teacher is among the millions of graying late-comers to the Facebook party.

At the very least, I reasoned, Facebook would be a light-hearted distraction, a virtual hangout where I could hang out with younger people who might give me a tip me off on some fancy gadget, time-saving app or pop culture reference I may have otherwise missed. To 21-year-old college students, nothing kills your credibility more than mentioning last year’s hot designer/chart-topper/rehabbing celeb in a lecture. Truth is, I would be happy with one so-so book recommendation or the name of a promising new musician whom I could name-drop at a dinner party.

Instead, I glimpsed the future of business relations. Laid-back Facebookers are a vastly different community to the stuffy LinkedIn users. What's more, a large percentage of my LinkedIn contacts are already on Facebook. Their crooked grins and rigid poses sans cocktail are but mere clicks away from my carefree students.

With LinkedIn, the aim is adding as many names to your network as possible - a macho “mine-is-bigger” gesture to any passersby. All these contacts have been accumulating for years in email folders, on my mobile and in a mountain of business cards. My LinkedIn network is the fourth place I check to get updates on my contacts.

Facebook tells me things about my contacts I never knew before - engagements, new babies, a jubilant note that my friend’s wife’s cancer has gone into remission.

I can also see holiday snaps, the books people are reading, music they’ve just listened to, the places they’ve traveled, the social causes they are dedicated to. Even the simple stream of consciousness updates - “I’m stressed,” “Hooray! I’m on holiday!”, “Where the hell is the sun?! It’s summer!” -speak volumes about these people, revealing far more than a business lunch.

Facebook’s unpretentious atmosphere where former bosses represent themselves as cartoon characters or pixilated avatars is a refreshing change from the black-and-white-handshake-and-business-card atmosphere I grew up with.

We spend so much time working, and - thanks to modern technologies - connected to the office. It’s about time we had an online community where we can act like we’re in our twenties again expressing our aggravations and hopes, from the petty to the life-changing.

How we manage our Facebook personas will determine our future business prospects. Hiring decisions will be made, M&A deals will be consummated, business alliances will be brokered based on the strength of our networks.

The creeping influence of big business on Facebook is already sending waves through the community. Petitions from the younger users to return Facebook to the students appear daily. To them, I want to say, “Dude, lighten up! The old Facebook is over.”

Explore Tech & Web

• Personal Tech

• The Web

• Gadgets & Gaming

Times recommends

• Spore: make yourself a little monster
• Human search engines: Chinese web vigilantes
• Living with Google's double-edged sword