Should banks use Facebook?

I noticed that the Canadian Bank TD had opened a Facebook group called TD Money Lounge.
  Seems to be a pure advert for their products to me, but it's pretty
popular with Canadians with over 3,500 members in this Group which is
more than any other bank group on Facebook.

Why? 

Well, the
idea is that the Money Lounge will help students work out their money
matters as their first experience of living away from ma and pa.

To
be honest, there's not much there.  A few plaudits from parents, the
odd student asking "how to pay bills?" which got the worldly response
"borrow $10k a year off TD" ... and then there's a discussion posted by
Philip Moriera stating:

"I find it interesting to see how many
of us staffers are here. I read in the other discussion about employees
that the objective of this group (since it is only a pilot) is to see
how many people will 'wander' over here on their own since there's no
advertising. I think most of the people here saw the 2 headlines on the
B-Web which is making up for most of the members.  So just post a
message here indicating you are a staff and hell, lets make it
interesting. Post your branch #! haha... 172 - Creekside BSC!!"

Cor blimey Phil, that's interesting.

First response?  Mario who says "i pmed (privately messaged) the person in charge why we couldn't access facebook at td when they have a facebook group."  In other words, like many firms, staffers can't access Facebook.  Ah well.

The look at TD made me start looking around for other interesting bank sites in Facebook and there's quite a few including Standard Chartered with over 150 members.  StanChart obviously allow staffers to use Facebook as all the comments are from StanChart workers:

"Im I.K. from Standard Chartered Lagos. Just wanted to holla at everyone out there."

"hi people. this is naser from bangladesh. how r u all doing?"

"Hi this is Matthew from Standard Chartered Singapore. Nice to meet all of you here :)"

"Hi, my name is Chris and I'm an alcoholic."

Whoops - scrub that last one.

Then I found the RBS group with a lovely picture of Fred Goodwin on the home page.  This one has over 500 members, with comments such as Andrew's: "Business Banking in Glasgow here! Anyone else work at 250 St Vincent Street?" 

Mmmmm ... such excitement.

Then there's the discussion board topics, like "What is it that u lov the most about RBS?" and responses that say it all "i love it when ur shift ends".

No wonder most banks don't let staff use Facebook.