Graduating from Facebook to LinkedIn

This could be the best week of articles thus far. If there is one thing that any college student reads, it is the article "Networking for students, a step-by-step guide". It gives so many helpful recommendations to the college student about what to say and do to better improve their networking skills. The best part of the article is where it states:

"A final note: it’s not FaceBook...
In some respects, college students are already pros at networking – at least casual, social networking. It’s critical, however, to shift into a professional networking mode when your career is the issue at hand."

Though Facebook can be used for networking, this makes a lot of sense because there are so many things that college students usually do not want their employer to be able to see. While it is easiest to just remove a lot of those things, the program LinkedIn is excellent. Not only does it allow one to view their network/people one is connected to, but it allows him/her/it to find more professional people in the same/related field, and make recommendations. The article "It's Not Just Who You Know"
does a good job of explaining this. Other companies include Jigsaw and Ziggs. Of all the articles that I have seen, LinkedIn seems to be the most mentioned, which is important since it is about who you know and the larger these services are, the chance of making new business contacts is increased.

In the article "Fifteen Uses of Professional Profiles within the Enterprise", the obvious advice is good because it mentions how one should use it to show off work.

These programs/services are also good for finding professors to brown-nose them for an A or to figure out what classes to take.

Especially for me, going into the music/movie industry, the quality of work almost falling behind connections, it appears as if I will have to fall victim that that annoying adage, "it's not what you know but who you know" while I invest in these networking programs heavily.

Collaborative Employees

if this comes off harsh, it is because the Cleveland Indians, my team, just blew it big time...

Most people like to be around other people. They like to be socially active and form bonds. Those bonds get more complicated and form networks. Networks soon spread from within one's area and reach outwards, becoming regional, to national, to international and finally global. Thus, it should be no exception to the rule that work should evolve from being mainly independent (with some exceptions) to collaborative (those exceptions can include musicians and sports teams). Programs as basic as Google Docs, and more complicated such as Basecamp, can allow for collaborative work. In an article titled Working Together...When Apart lists out 10 techniques to NOT violate these group dyanmics. Using Placeware, Microsoft's latest acquisition, Microsoft is attempting to follow suit and set up online meetings. Everything has become about "the greater good", and collaboration. Whether it works or not is up for debate, but what is not, is that it is the future. Another cool collaborative program is Google Calendar which allows you to see other people's calendars. Depending on settings, I'm pretty sure that you can edit them too.

But looking back at the article Working Together...When Apart, all of the 10 online collaboration techniques seem so obvious and like things that should happen in the real world as well as online. Some examples include "Assign tasks that are challenging and interesting"; "Ensure the task is meaningful to the team and the company"; and, "When building a virtual team, solicit volunteers as much as possible."

Individualism is the past and collaboration is the future...there's no way around it and no way to avoid it, for better or worse...

YAY! NOW we are ALL Celebrities

Why is Kevin Federline...excuse me, K-Fed, so famous? Simple: paparazzi. Their infectuous disease is everywhere. Now, that disease has been transferred to MySpace, Facebook, and more or less in general: the Internet. In case I didn't care enough about what Jessica Simpson did in her free time, now I can worry about what I do in my spare time. I have to worry about the internet paparazzi coming back to haunt me down the road. How many people have pictures of illicit drug use? Underage drinking? Anything else that could haunt your career? Either way you are/can be front page news.

And yet, why use Facebook? Why use MySpace? I don't know but i do both. They are almost social norms and necessary, otherwise you are an outcast. We joke amongst my friends that we cannot be friends in real life unless we are friends on Facebook. Yet, I don't want the whole world knowing what I'm doing...or do I? No, I tell myself, I don't. I HATE all of those magazines that are meant to create gossip yet have a high profit margin. Reality check: WHO CARES WHAT CELEBRITIES DO IN THEIR FREE TIME? I DON'T! Guess what? They slip up and make mistakes too!

So, naturally humans have created programs to clean up profiles. One, for instance, is called Reputation Defender. There is a fee associated with the service. While the service sounds nice, Uncle Mike can save you money while not using it (though you do lose the benefits of social networking): DELETE YOUR PROFILE! DELETE YOUR SCREEN NAME! LIVE UNDER A ROCK! I guess I'll just have to learn to live with the fact that my life is always on the line. So much for running for President.

Blogging and social networking are just proof though that your online reputation supercedes your actual reputation. GREAAAAAAT. JUST what I needed.

Stalking 101...Via Mobile Technology...

Upon reading "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution", I started thinking about "Lovegety and P2P Journalism" and the future of blogging. (Rheingold 165) I must admit that I'm a bit torn between whether or not "inter-personal awareness devices" (IPAD) are creepy or not. IPADs allow one to find people in real-world spaces (though I'm not sure within what radius), are nearby. On one hand, that sounds cool. For instance, with the company Lovegety, I can see when a person of the opposite sex is nearby. The Japanese have been using this product for a while. Let's be honest: someone gets desperate, Lovegety (or the other products like it such as Gaydar, Mobile Cupid Service, and ImaHima) can provide a quick answer. By desperate I mean for a relationship, though I suppose it could be used for a prostitution ring, if one was THAAAAAAT desperate. I suppose it is kind of like a website like e-Harmony, or the dozens of other dating services that "guarentee" results.

On the other hand, that's just plain CREEPY. It is the perfect place to say "HI! I'M A STALKER! YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE!" Perfect. Facebook/Myspace didn't allow for enough stalkers anyways....

But the whole idea of using mobile devices (such as Lovegety, etc.) is so key to current society. For instance, the usage of cellular phones has improved the news. By improved I mean getting it out faster/easier. For instance, with the terrible tragedy of Virginia Tech earlier this year, one kid had footage on his cell phone and sent it to the news services. It provided a real video stream prior to the video crews being able to get there. In this instance, mobile devices played an important role. It will be interesting to see how mobile devices continue to impact the news.

Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. 1st Ed. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2002.

Scoble, Robert, and Shel Israel. Naked Conversations. 1st Ed. Hoboken, NJ: Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006