Cybervetting

In class a few days ago we had a discussion about cybervetting. Cybervetting is when potential employers and school admissions use information from someone’s social media profile in evaluating them for hire or acceptance. Author of I Know Who You Are and I Saw  What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, Lori Andrews thinks that we need to adopt a Social Network Constitution to protect our rights online. I can both agree and disagree with her proposal. I understand that by posting something to a social media site, you are putting the information/pictures out there for people to see, but I think we should have a right to post what we want our friends to see without the worry of being watched. I believe that the user of the SNS needs to be responsible about what they are posting online, and there shouldn’t be a problem. I definitely think that there needs to be some type of regulation on what the schools and businesses can use against you. For example, if you post a picture of yourself in possession of an illegal drug, obviously it can be used against you. If you post a picture of yourself (a person over the age of 21) holding a beer, the employer/school should not be able to use it against you because you're not breaking the law.

Will Facebook end up like the rest?

This week in my New Media class we learned about Social Networking Sites (SNS). As many of you know, these sites are a great way to connect with people you know to share pictures and update them with information about you and your everyday life. Since I started using the internet regularly, I’ve had an account on Xanga, Myspace, and Facebook. By using these websites over the years, I’ve noticed that they are comparable to a popular toy I had when I was a kid, the Furby. It was really awesome when it first came out; then I got it and it was kind of fun; then it wouldn’t shut-up and it got really annoying, so i took the batteries out. As time went on it got old and boring, and then something better came out, so I forgot all about it. When I got Xanga, I only used it for a year or two before MySpace came out, so I have only a vague memory of what it was like. I really enjoyed MySpace my first few years of high school. I was able to change the entire look of my page how I wanted it to be and I would spent hours doing this and talking back and forth with my friends. When I first heard about Facebook I thought it looked stupid because you couldn’t personalize it as much as MySpace. After using the site, I realized that it was much easier to find my friends since they were using their actual name and not a made up username. Eventually I started using Facebook more and more, and so did everyone else. Now, not a single one of my friends, or myself use MySpace. With this being said, I start to wonder if Facebook is just a fad like the other two websites were. I’ve noticed over the last year that the amount of my friends that regularly post on Facebook has drastically decreased. Even when I go on now, I rarely update my status. I only occasionally post pictures, but I don’t share entire albums like I did previously. I went from going on and posting everyday, to going on once a week just to scroll through my newsfeed to see if anyone posted cool pictures. I find it to be unassuming and a waste of my time. I think it’ll be interesting to see how long the excitement of Facebook actually lasts, or if it will become another addition to the SNS graveyard.

Image from: deepspacemarketing.com

Google

This week in my New Media class were learning about the central role that Google plays in people’s online lives. One question that was raised is, does Google have too much power over our lives? In some ways I feel that it does, and in others, it does not. I don’t personally feel like Google runs my life, although I use it everyday. When I go onto the Internet and want to find something quickly, the best way to find it is to Google it. I can look up any type of information or website that I want to just by typing it in. I think it is one of the best references there is out there for anything you need to find.  I’ve tried other search engines, but none of them were as helpful to me as Google. One thing that would be devastating to not only me, but almost everyone in the Internet using world, is if Google suddenly crashed or made their information unavailable. This is one way that I think Google does run our lives. Myself and probably millions of other people look at Google as the portal to the internet. I know I would be able to figure out how to find things on the internet without Google, but it wouldn’t be nearly as easy.

Another question that was raised is, are we addicted to Google? I’m not sure if people are just addicted to Google, or the internet as a whole. But one thing I do know is that almost every single internet using person that I have met uses Google regularly or at least has used it multiple times before. It’s just so easy to do. With this being said, I do think it is possibly a risk to our privacy. I say this because there is so much information and pictures being put up on the internet that you never know whose hands it’s going to land in. There are so many ways that people can find out information about people that it’s a little scary. I think the people to be most concerned about is kids. With the amount that kids use electronics and the internet now, there is still so much they don’t know about how to be safe on the internet.

Image from: velocityagency.com

A Blog About Bloggers

For my very first blog post I am going to share my response to an interview of Trine-Maria Kristensen conducted by Rebecca Blood, in February 2007. This was one of many interviews she did of bloggers talking about blogging. Kristensen has a blog called Hovedetpaabloggen, where she writes about her interests and things that she wants people to read and respond to. She is the founder of Social Square, a small company that helps organizations learn how to use and understand social media.

In the interview Kristensen said that one thing that got her interested in blogs was "the interconnection with people". I liked how she brought this up because I think one of the best things about blogs is that by writing about a specific topic or interest, one can bring a whole group of people together from all over the world, and allow them to share their own input, or opinion. This is a great way to learn and share information that otherwise might not be brought to peoples attention. 

Also brought up in her interview, was that when Kristensen started blogging, she was extremely shy with her posts and was unsure of what to write about This made it hard for her to get into it and she almost gave up, even though she thought it was a great way to connect with people she wouldn’t otherwise be able to. When she tried again the following year, she realized how open and inviting the blogging world really was. So many people were supportive of her ideas that it helped her become less shy where she felt comfortable sending out links to her blog. I’m glad that she brought this up in her interview because as an inexperienced writer starting a new blog, it is almost intimidating. I feel like there are so many other people out there that have way more knowledge about the topics that I would write about, that it’s hard for me to come up with something that people would actually want to read. I think her interview helped me see that regardless of what I write about, there will be people that are interested in reading and commenting about it. Which in the end we may all get a little bit smarter.

Trine-Maria Kristensen’s blog has become so successful that she was able to start a whole new career path from it. She now works full-time with corporate blogging where she does presentations, workshops, and works on projects with both large and small organizations. Her blog even became so recognized that she was contacted by an editor asking her to write a book about them, which was recently published, called Weblogs. I think its great that something that she originally did for fun in her free time has become so life changing for her.