Social networking websites like MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut and the lesser known sites like Badoo and Broadcaster are being used by millions of people.
People connect with other people through public messages, photos and video messages. For a lot of youngster these sites are their main communication tool to get in touch with friends and family. In fact, for a lot of youngster, this is the only way they communicate with their parents.
It is amazing how open people are and how freely people feel with publishing personal information on their social networking page.
People don’t realize that information found on their social networking page can be used against them.
Often they use a nickname so the real name is not displayed but when you read the public comments under many MySpace profile, you get a lot of information.
People leave comments with their phone number, when they are on vacation, what they hate and love and how they think about their employer.
Photos say more than words and can cause you a lot of trouble as well. When I hire a new employee, I google the candidate and she or he better look professionally on their website photos. Do I see your drunken face than I won’t hire you.
To demonstrate how easy it is for people to track information on site like MySpace, please type or copy and paste the following line in a Google search bar:
“I hate working at” site:profile.myspace.com
You have to add quotes around: I hate working at so these keywords stay grouped together. Of course you can add a company at the end for more specific searches but you get the point.
Even a search on a company name alone makes an interesting read. Type this into Google: “citizens bank” site:profile.myspace.com
The sky is the limit on the keywords that you can search on and in many cases; you will get more search results in Google than searching through a search box on a social networking website.
Removing information that is stored in the search engine database is very difficult and stays stored for many months. Google makes many copies of websites and calls this: cached websites.
Before you publish anything on the Internet: think twice, write once.
Please tell me what you think about the information that people are willing to share with the rest of the world.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Adam Kamerer // Dec 24, 2007 at 1:02 pm
You make some good points. On the other hand, if used in a classy, professional manner, social networking sites can do a lot of boost your reputation. Thanks for the post.
2 Patrick // Dec 25, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Adam,
You are absolutely right. Unfortunately, I did see a lot of profile pages that ruin the user’s reputation.