Posts categoriezed as comic

Your true profile

Your true profile published on 3 Comments on Your true profile

Most employers check out potential new hires on facebook these days.

According to CareerBuilder.co.uk, more than half (53%) of employers research potential job candidates on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
The days of simply relying on the candidates CV and what their referees say, is long gone.
Our ability to easily upload content to the internet from anywhere means that future employers will be tempted to look for this content in order to better understand what you may be really like.

They want to confirm that what you have on your CV is factual, and that you are not a secret sociopath who may cause damage to the company in the future. Also, human nature being what it is, they just want to know stuff about you.

A decent percentage of employers do admit to finding out items online, which has persuaded them to not hire a candidate.
For example,  this article discusses a female psychiatrist being passed over for a role, due to pictures posted on facebook.

And it does not end at getting the job.
As I have blogged about before, you can get “facebook fired” ifyou decide to post negative comments about fellow workers or the company that employs you.

The rise of activity like this has led to companies such as Reputationdefender.com, and many others, springing up. Reputationdefender.com offers to monitor your Web reputation for $10 USD a month, plus a one-time fee of $30 USD to remove something from the internet, if an unwanted item somehow gets out of control.
This is a good service and may be very useful to some people.

I still believe that the simplest course of action to defend your reputation, is simply to use your common sense.
If that fails, then here are some quick tips to keep in mind:

  • IF you want to post suspect comments, blogs or pictures, then make sure of your privacy settings first.
  • BEFORE you add work colleagues as facebook friends, set up a group with limited privacy settings, and add them to that group. Then (if you need to) you can post things that they do not have permissions to  view.
  • IF you must post a suspect/spicey/goatse  image online, try using an anonymous image loader, such as imgur.com.
    Then, the image url cannot be traced back to you.
  • PRIVATE twitter accounts are easy to set up. Use one if you want to tweet & share privately. Just lock the account and off you go.
  • ADULT dating sites don’t always need your face in the picture. However, you still need to use your head when using them.
  • COMMUNITIES can be forgiving or they can turn on you. THINK before you post.
  • When something gets posted online, it can remain there FOREVER. Even if you try to delete it. There are backups, copies and caches to make sure nothing is lost.
    (Although Twitter now removes deleted tweets from searches, some services such as Friendfeed,or clients such as Tweetdeck, can retain these tweets.)
  • RESPECT other people’s content and be aware that if you post or share their content it might breach copyright laws. For example, a photo that your friend took is their property, not yours. You can only post it online if you have their permission.

If you want to do well on the internet, I actually advise you to adopt a paranoid mindset, so that you will THINK BEFORE YOU POST. This will help make your online life much easier to enjoy.

 

Beauty of Social Media

Beauty of Social Media published on 5 Comments on Beauty of Social Media

The best thing about social media is that most people still are not sure what it is all about.

Especially many businesses.
Sure, they know it has something to do with connect to their customers, but they are not precisely sure how best to do this.
Many believe the marketing department is the best part of their organisation to handle social media, as it is just another marketing medium, right?

The great thing for many “marketers” who now promote themselves as being experts in the field, is that they can claim this based on the flimsiest of reasons.
They claim to understand and be experts on this new medium, with reasons such as:

  • they migrated the company from a facebook group to a facebook page
  • they suggested adding “share to” links onto the company website
  • they have a personal blog that gets commented on at least once a month
  • they read the latest stats/graphs/demographic charts and can recite user specifics in a general sense
  • they once got the company facebook page over 200 likes in a week, by running an online competition

The truth (i.m.o.) is that the marketing department should stay away from social media in many cases. They are not always the right people for the job, and social media is not just a marketing medium.

Community managers should be employed to help mange your social media presence. These people are usually the ones with a much better understanding of the new landscape.
They can work in with marketing to help make a campaign more successful, but their most important task is to help keep your social media frontier moving forward, especially when marketing have forgotten it while they go off to prepare their next EDM strategy, or website promotion.

Socionesia

Socionesia published on No Comments on Socionesia

You will know someone that suffers from this ailment.

It may be someone close to you- a family member or a good friend.
It may be a work colleague that you really only speak to when you need to borrow a stapler.
Maybe it is your neighbour or their kids.

Or maybe it is YOU.

If you suffer from SOCIONESIA, do not be ashamed. This disease is spreading in our community right now, and there is nothing we can do about it. Just embrace it.
The WHO Report 1996 stated that in the  past 20 years since it’s publication, at least 30 new diseases had emerged, for many of which there is no treatment, cure or vaccine, or the possibility of effective prevention or control.
At this time, the internet was still gaining popularity, so they would not have been able to factor in all of the “diseases” that a life lived online could bring.

A study posted last year points to a possible connection between Internet use and psychosis.
The affliction known as “internet addiction disorder” is fairly well known these days, and presents itself in a variety of ways.
And more disorders would most likely be discovered every week, I am guessing.

So, rather than getting all stressed out about this, I say we just go with it and see what happens.
Realise that the internet can seriously mess us up (something we should ALL be aware of by now) and that we need to support people we meet, who have a modern online disease.

Don’t get angry at the girl that cannot stop texting friends for even 5 minutes.
Never laugh at the man that thinks the images on women on dating sites are really what they look like.
Try not to shun friends that want to stay in on weekends to play MMORPGs.
Forgive the few that still use MySpace.

We are all just trying to swim upstream, through a download of electronic  information.

 

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