Social networking is no longer a passing fad, it's a serious communication tool
(rather addictive and somewhat time-consuming in nature) that provides a relatively easy (one-size-fits-all) means of staying in touch with each of your friends, most of your relatives, some of your acquaintances, many of your business associates, all of your fans, and even a smattering of strangers who share your common interests.
On Facebook alone, approximately “60 million individual status updates” are posted daily by users of the service.
If you think that’s a huge number, try swallowing this: “If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world.”
Those figures are part of some rather staggering statistics about social networking and media, which were gathered from the video below that is based on the book “Socialnomics” written by Erik Qualman. Take a look for yourself.
In the past several days, quite a bit of controversy has been brewing over social networking sites, in particular Facebook and some ongoing privacy concerns.
It’s no secret that admissions departments in colleges and universities gather information about applicants from online social networking sites, and it’s been currently estimated in this competitive job market that 95 percent of all HR departments visit social network pages to round out a more complete profile from a job-seeking applicant.
Now comes some new information to add to the mix.
Investigative journalist, Charles Feldman for KNX 1070 (CBS Newsradio - Los Angles/Orange County/ Southern California) has raised some serious concerns regarding the use of personal information (about you) gleaned by trolling “data mining companies,” who ultimately sell your personal statistics and opinions and market that information to others as a “proprietary product.”
In Feldman’s four part series, “ Think Before You Friend!” which includes some additional raw audio footage, he takes listeners on an “Orwellian” adventure exposing how banks, lending institutions, real estate agents and even potential landlords are using information about you that they find online through social networks.
You can listen to Feldman’s excellent eye-opening report by following this link.
Now, does anyone care to hide under a rock?
Stay tuned, there are actions you can implement to take charge of your online image.
