I heard this once, and I think it sums up Facebook pretty nicely:
Imagine your sitting down to dinner with your mom, your friends, your coworkers, your boss, your high school ex, your most recent ex, your current significant other, a fling you had on that trip to Mexico, and a few random people you haven't even met before. Now imagine you are all screening a slideshow of each of these peoples' collection of photos of you, from your baby pictures to the ones of you doing a striptease when you'd had a bit too much to drink last week. Awkward right? Nightmarish maybe? Yeah, that can be Facebook.
Bearing that in mind, let's get started on building your online reputation with Facebook. Almost everyone has a Facebook profile these days, and this profile is one of the first things that appears in a Google search of your name (try it out if you don't believe me). That being said, it is very important that your profile is not incriminating.
First, SET YOUR PRIVACY SETTINGS!
I cannot stress this enough. If you don't already know, Facebook allows users to specify their individual privacy settings (just go to the settings tab, you will see it). Please, please, please go there right now and play with these settings.
I suggest locking your profile, photos, videos, etc. to anyone that is not your friend. Then, create a list (mine is called "Limited Profile") of people that you do not wish to see everything (i.e. bosses, coworkers, family). Once that list is created, limit your settings to allow this list to only see your basic info and prevent them from seeing your wall, photos, videos, links, etc.
After you have set your privacy settings, I suggest looking through your photos and deleting and untagging potentially incriminating images. Potential and current employers do not want to see you playing beer pong or passed out on a friend's bathroom floor. And please remember, due to the privacy policy of Facebook, anything posted on Facebook remains online forever and becomes property of Facebook!
Finally, keep in mind the horror stories of people being fired for their Facebook...Do not post "Playing hookie" or "I'm so hung over" as your status if you are calling in sick to work. Your boss could see this and that would be grounds for dismissal...
Basically, Facebook is not for professional profiles, and the best practice for maintaining your Facebook profile is to lock it up as tightly as possible. Just make sure that no one sees anything you wouldn't want them to know about!
0 comments:
Post a Comment