Facebook or LinkedIn for business networking?

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There is a really interesting and active thread in the eMarketing Association Network Group on LinkedIn. The question raised by Marco Schreurs is:

“Do you see Facebook groups as a business network? Or should we focus on linkedin?”

With over 150 responses he has stated a question that raises a lot of passion and engages analytical minds. In my case, my answer is straight forward and focuses on simplicity. Here is what I said:

I do not currently see FB as a strong way of building or engaging my business network, if with business network you mean corporate colleagues, vendors, business customers etc. For such a business network I find LI to be an excellent tool.

That said, I do use FB Groups for “non-corporate” focused activities, like charity, NGO and hobby engagements.

My choice is for two reasons: 1) my corporate contacts on FB don’t expect, and sometimes don’t appreciate, business conversations on FB, and 2) with limited time I am more than happy to use FB and LI for different purposes instead of letting them overlap too much.

There is another reason to why I don’t embrace FB in the corporate world; competing with LI would prevent FB from being the best it can be in the “private” world, and vice versa. I don’t believe in the “ultimate platform” for all things social, but rather work with “best of breed” tools. In fact, I use Meetup, Biznik, Quora and other tools as excellent venues for engaging with different types of audiences.

If FB and its app-community against all odds manages to produce good enough tools that enable a significant corporate audience then I of course have to reevaluate where I spend my time.

Another important question is: what is more useful: one tool that does it all, or specialized tools for different purposes?

So on that last question, what is your preference, one tool that does it all, or specialized tools for different purposes?