Facebook Friday
I was going to post these yesterday – but decided to make it Facebook Friday today! I got two good newsbits here…
First, as I am sure you have all heard, Facebook has exceeded the 250,000 members mark.
July 15, 2009
Facebook Membership Hits 250 Million
By Chloe Albanesius, PCMag.comFacebook has passed the 250 million member mark, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday.
“For us, growing to 250 million users isn’t just an impressive number; it is a mark of how many personal connections all of you have made, and how far we at Facebook have to go to extend the power of connection to the billions of people around the world,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.
The milestone comes just three months after Facebook reached 200 million members, and one month after Facebook bypassed MySpace in terms of total U.S. visitors for the first time.
“The rapid pace of our growth is humbling and exciting for us, and it affirms that people everywhere are realizing the power of staying connected to everything they care about on Facebook,” Zuckerberg said.
In May, Facebook pulled in 70.278 million unique visitors in the states, compared to MySpace’s 70.237 million, according to data released by ComScore. That made Facebook the most popular site in the U.S., in terms of visitors. Just a month earlier, Facebook had a little over 67 million U.S. visitors behind MySpace’s 70.9 million.
Obviously PC Pandora computer monitoring software can play a great role in letting parents know who in that quarter-of-a-million people are talking to their kids. There’s no reason to just assume things are safe… it’ll also let parents know if their kid counts for 2 or 3 of those 250,000 members, as many kids have multiple profiles – parents are clueless about, FYI.
The second story for y’all is more of an essay op-ed. Christine Roberts at the NY Daily News wrote a story about employers checking social networking pages for personality tests of potential candidates. Of course, this has been discussed before, but it’s always nice to revisit the issue and keep it fresh in everyone’s heads.
I guess it’s because kids have no concept of how big the world really is and the power of the internet. They don’t comprehend a society and time before when everyone had a private life. Kids assume that because they exist, they are the star of their own little show and that they can do or say anything and then talk about it online and only people they know would watch. On the contrary, anyone and everyone is watching.
The greatest lesson you can teach your kids from the start is that THE INTERNET IS NOT PRIVATE. Everything you do or say via electronic means can and will be seen, read, and heard by others. So think twice before posting pictures of yourself getting wasted. Think twice before labeling yourself as a ‘badass rebel’ on social networking sites.
And parents, it is just as much your job as theirs to KNOW what they are posting and how they are representing themselves. You have the advantage of know how information travels. They don’t see it yet, so you have to teach them. But you can’t teach them if you don’t KNOW what they are doing.
That’s where our PC Pandora comes in… FYI…
July 14th 2009
Hey kids, Facebook is forever
By Christine Roberts, DAILY NEWS WRITERYou walk into the manager’s office, resume tightly gripped in your left hand. You sit down, survive the awkward introduction and even nail the unanswerable “What is your greatest weakness?” question.
Confident, you relax and think to yourself, “Finally, an employer seems interested.” But while you rattle off your list of accomplishments, the manager isn’t really listening. Instead, he is clicking through pictures of the house party you went to last week and — yikes — pictures of you from four years ago, at your after-prom party.
These pictures weren’t exactly CEO-material. But how could you expect that pictures that were from — what seems like — eras ago would be back to haunt you? In fact, you are in good company. Take the newly appointed head of MI6, Sir John Walters, for example. When Facebook photos of him in a swimsuit appeared online last week, people in Britain began to question his credentials as the leader of the Secret Intelligence Service.
While your first job interview may not be as crucial as the safety of an entire country, Walters’s example proves a point. As social networking sites seem to grow by the second, so does your Internet footprint. And though you may delete pictures and comments from your Facebook, the trail you leave will stay there forever.
“You want to be careful with any information that you are sharing online, said Jennifer Grasz, CareerBuilder.com’s media correspondent. “The shelf life of the information may be longer than expected.”
In the second quarter of 2008, CareerBuilder asked 2,500 hiring managers whether they look to Facebook or other social networking Web sites to find more information about prospective employees; 22% of managers said yes. In the second quarter of 2009, that percentage rose to 38%.
The year-to-year increase reflects the growing popularity — and growing risk — of social networking sites. But while evidence suggests that closing your Facebook page forever is the best possible solution, Grasz said that the Internet can sometimes be used to your benefit. “
Twenty-four percent of hiring managers, every one out of four surveyed, said they found content that helped them to solidify their decision to hire a candidate,” Grasz said. “On the other side, 34% said they found content to dismiss the candidate.”
Even before you reach your first job interview, what you post on the Internet can affect you. According to a study released by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions last year, one in 10 colleges and universities surveyed admitted to visiting prospective students’ social networking pages when making an admissions decision.
“Our advice to students is to be prudent and discrete,” said Jeff Olson, Kaplan’s Director of Research. “When you are communicating on the public Internet, there is a digital record that will not go away.”
So, what should you do?
Don’t abolish your Facebook page into the abyss of the World Wide Web. Rather, use it to your advantage. Fill it with information that does justice to what you have accomplished.
Also, carefully monitor your comments, the groups you join and your privacy settings.
“You want to make sure that the information you are sharing is going to put you in a positive light,” Grasz said.
So the next time you are deciding whether to impress your friends with crazy photos from Friday night, carefully consider who else might stumble upon them.
