Have you heard of Mark Zuckerberg? If you have a high school or college student, you’re probably familiar with the 23-year old’s invention – Facebook. With a humble start as an online Harvard student directory, it has grown to more than 35 million users today, and is a social networking phenomenon. What makes Facebook compelling is the way it mimics on-line the natural way people build networks and social circles in day-to-day life.

As the father of a 19-year-old college sophomore (University of San Francisco, go Dons!) and two 17-year-old high school juniors here in Colorado, I’ve had the chance to watch the development of Facebook, and a similar site My Space, as the premier social networking sites for young people. What I am really interested in is how this form of social interaction will develop as this generation of young people comes of age and enters the work force. How will it impact people’s professional world? Sites like Linkedin provide a very stiff, resume-like interaction that likely seems pretty boring to the Facebook crowd, but what about the focused needs of professionals to communicate and share ideas?

The connection between Facebook, Baxa and pharmacy is our desire to facilitate communication and good ideas about the practice of pharmacy.

In late 2005, Baxa launched eBug – the electronic Baxa users’ group – to promote social networking among pharmacists. Conceived as a means to get pharmacists and technicians to share best practices and solutions to everyday issues, the site today is used mainly as a reference tool.

I’d like to hear from you about how capabilities for professional interaction and connections with pharmacists like yourself would be received and utilized. In short, what can Baxa do to encourage interchanges among users? How can we make the eBug tool more useful to you and your staff?

I encourage you to take a few minutes to answer our survey at www.baxa.com/ebug.

Help us help you by giving us some feedback on your needs and concerns. By the way, are you interested in what millions of people are obsessed with? Check out www.facebook.com. As always, I welcome your personal comments at greg.baldwin@baxa.com.