Now a days it is close to impossible to watch a television station, see an advertisement for a company, attend a talk or lecture, or even to join a club or group without being given a link to a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn site for that particular person, group, or product. As these are the three main sites that I have been exposed to thus far in my college career, these are the sites I am choosing to discuss in terms of the prevalence and privacy issues. I have had a Facebook account since the end of my freshman year in high school, and I have just recently joined LinkedIn as I will be beginning my job search in one short year.
Because I have just joined LinkedIn, I have “connections” in the single digits. I have actually not been on my page since I created it. The reason that I have this site is for future job prospects. Being in the business school I am constantly meeting people in the business world who have accounts in LinkedIn who are critical to make connections with now and network. I think that LinkedIn is very important for this very aspect. I believe that the prevalence of this site is all due to the career side of the site. You are able to post your job experience, your school experience, your resume, and even recommendations from other connections and people in the business field. I think that this site seems to be as private or as public as you would like to make it, however the more information you give often, the more it can be beneficial to your career search. When it comes to using LinkedIn, I am not too worried about my privacy. This tends to be the accounts that most people keep as professional as possible. You are allotted one picture as your main picture and then may have people write on your wall and view your profile. As far as I am aware, there are no features such as Facebook has where you can “like” comments, and no applications that can be played and posted to you wall as well. Because of this, I like the privacy that LinkedIn provides. I think that as of now, LinkedIn definitely has more positive benefits and trends rather than negative. The only negative I could see on this site was if someone was to entangle their personal life with their professional life on this site. For example if someone had a connection who was a close friend and they began to use this site to have conversations about their social life this could have a negative impact on their career. However, all in all I see LinkedIn as a very innovative site that brings many networking opportunities for people of all career fields, ages, and backgrounds.
In contrast to LinkedIn, my connections or “friends” total over one thousand. My Facebook site is a main tab on my homepage of the internet and I tend to access my Facebook account every time that I log into the internet. I would say that as a whole, I do not use Facebook as much as most people, but I do find myself checking it if I get the text updates that say there is a post I have been tagged in or if someone has written on my wall. I think that Facebook pushes the extreme limits on privacy. With all of your closest friends having access to your wall and the ability to post any picture of your or any comment that they would like at anytime, and letting other people have the ability to see it even before you do also makes me nervous. I have had the experience of many of my friends having their accounts hacked into and had many embarrassing things written or even simply been spammed. The concept of Facebook was a very positive social trend, but when over 6 million people have an account, it is not hard to believe that nearly anyone can access information about you over your account. As a positive, this site has created controls that you can customize as to how much you would like other people to see, and even given you the ability to choose exactly which of your friends see what, however it is of popular belief that these privacies can be easily passed and your site can be accessed by strangers, and potential clients. I do believe that Facebook has led to an entanglement in our personal lives and technology. I think that any site that people spend hours and hours on has the ability to do this. Many people become what they try to portray on their Facebook account. I think it is something very important for people to consider when they are creating a social networking site that they know many people will be using, especially in a society like today’s where safety and privacy are considered very important.
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