Anyone on Twitter?

Part of it is a trust thing, verify that you are honest with them.

A standard background check is more than capable of determining if you committed a crime. But they still ask you up front to disclose anything.

Devilsbane wrote: »

Part of it is a trust thing, verify that you are honest with them.

A standard background check is more than capable of determining if you committed a crime. But they still ask you up front to disclose anything.

I don't buy it. My facebook is my business. My twitter is my business. Neither one of those things should make or break me professionally. If they want a profile page, then can look at my linkedin.

Slowhand

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

This guys facebook is epic. Highly recommended lol

"Epic", "pants-on-head retarded", same thing.

gosh1976

I'm on twitter. I follow a few friends, get some sports news headlines, follow my local newspaper, follow various tech related news sites or individual people.

You can follow me if you care to: @gosh1976

I won't be filling up your twitter feed that's for sure.

edit: oh yes I also follow some craft beer related guys and establishments...

ssampier

Bl8ckr0uter, I think it's mostly because you could be hiding drug information or hanging out with terrorists (or hiding terrorists and hanging out with drugs).

But you you think they at least be smarter about it. They should already know what you're doing online for a sensitive contract.

Paul Boz wrote: »

That's retarded. Anyone worth their salt would just make a bunch of dummy accounts to respond to that question. A legit employer would find the social networking sites without having to ask

You quoted me even though it's not my quote. It didn't stop me from following you. I did it mostly because Baton Rouge is fun word to say.

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

I don't buy it. My facebook is my business. My twitter is my business. Neither one of those things should make or break me professionally. If they want a profile page, then can look at my linkedin.

There have been a string of cases lately where people have been fired for their facebook statuses or other information on facebook. For example the team mascot who had a status saying that the team only won a few games and yet all of the coaches received contract extensions. Or there was another case where a person wrote how they hated their boss. Apparently one of their coworkers saw it and reported back. Next day? He didn't have to hate his boss anymore.

Also remember that this was for a position with the Department of Justice. For some government jobs, they will spend thousands of dollars to canvas your neighborhood, ask any person you ever spoke with what they think about you, and give you a polygraph test (asking questions like "Have you ever smoked marajuana in your life?"). Do you really think they won't touch your facebook and twitter pages?

Devilsbane wrote: »

There have been a string of cases lately where people have been fired for their facebook statuses or other information on facebook. For example the team mascot who had a status saying that the team only won a few games and yet all of the coaches received contract extensions. Or there was another case where a person wrote how they hated their boss. Apparently one of their coworkers saw it and reported back. Next day? He didn't have to hate his boss anymore.

Also remember that this was for a position with the Department of Justice. For some government jobs, they will spend thousands of dollars to canvas your neighborhood, ask any person you ever spoke with what they think about you, and give you a polygraph test (asking questions like "Have you ever smoked marajuana in your life?"). Do you really think they won't touch your facebook and twitter pages?

I still don't buy it man. I don't think it is any of my bosses business what I do on my own free time (as long as it doesn't effect the business). I would rather get rid of facebook (or make a "fake" one) than have to give it up to my boss

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

I still don't buy it man. I don't think it is any of my bosses business what I do on my own free time (as long as it doesn't effect the business). I would rather get rid of facebook (or make a "fake" one) than have to give it up to my boss

You can go ahead and make a fake one, and if they find that you have an additional one (which really doesn't take much effort if they are talking with all of your friends and family already), you won't get the job.

Devilsbane wrote: »

You can go ahead and make a fake one, and if they find that you have an additional one (which really doesn't take much effort if they are talking with all of your friends and family already), you won't get the job.

That's bull though. It isn't any of their business. If you have two facebook who cares? I don't think I would want to work for a place that wants my social networking information anyway. No one who isn't a friend can see much of anything on mine anyway but still.

NightShade03

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

No one who isn't a friend can see much of anything on mine anyway but still.

That's not *entirely* true

Mike-Mike

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

That's bull though. It isn't any of their business. If you have two facebook who cares? I don't think I would want to work for a place that wants my social networking information anyway. No one who isn't a friend can see much of anything on mine anyway but still.

I can see both sides of the fence here... i think it depends on your job..

NightShade03 wrote: »

That's not *entirely* true

I turned off indexing and stuff. The only remote thing is if they look on other peoples page or of course ask facebook or use some exploit.

Mike-Mike wrote: »

I can see both sides of the fence here... i think it depends on your job..

If they are asking for mine I want to see theirs. Social networking stuff is where I draw the line from my personal and professional life.

mikej412

networker050184 wrote: »

I tried following some tech people a while back to see if it was worth it. I really don't care what these people are doing every ten minutes though. Some of the stuff had good info but the vast majority was useless personal crap.

Ditto. I was hoping for some insight into corporate direction -- or at least some amusing advertising or competitor bashing -- and all I got was personal status updates and links to "interesting sites" that weren't interesting. Not worth it just to get the few tweets masterminded by marketing to correspond to corporate events or press releases.

And one account that had information I did want to follow started re-tweeting 6 or 7 other sort of related channels I had no interest in..... so I don't follow the twits anymore.

I've never seen the point of Twitter, and have never signed up for an account.

I do find amusing the number of people these days who have self-branded themselves as "Social Media Consultants".

Do people really need advice on how to regularly make pointless comments and updates?

MS

Forsaken_GA

From a practical standpoint, I just don't see the point of twitter or facebook. I can find my own productivity killers, thank you very much.

Then I have the other viewpoint. The 'get off my lawn!' one. I was doing communications through online back in the BBS days. We had our online 'invest a little time each day games.' They were called Door games, and I'd rather play Tradewars 2002 and Legend of the Red Dragon over Farmville and Mafia Wars any day of the week. Forums where you could talk to people all over the world on any subject imaginable? We called that Fidonet (along with a plethora of Fido-compatible independant networks). File transfers? Replace FTP, SSH, SCP with Zmodem and HSLink.

Back when I was a teen and doing all of this stuff, people thought I was weird and a nerd (they got the nerd part right). Nowadays, it's all run of the mill. There's a part of me that's offended that what used to be my hobby has become so ubiquitous.

Then again, these services provide part of the reason as to why I have a job, so my indignation gets curbed quite a bit on payday.

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Back when I was a teen and doing all of this stuff, people thought I was weird and a nerd (they got the nerd part right). Nowadays, it's all run of the mill. There's a part of me that's offended that what used to be my hobby has become so ubiquitous.

+1 I was a nerd back in middleschool because I played Runescape, and now you just sit and pick your vegtables all day. Now who is the nerd??

Oh wait, still me. I read books and watch videos about computers. Damnit, I thought was one of the cool kids now.

Sabalo

I don't get the "point" of World of Warcraft, but that does not mean it is worthless. The point of any social interaction, whether than interaction is online, on the telephone, in person, or via mind-bondage is simply... social interaction.

Not everything needs to fit with one's Overall Plan for World Domination. Sometimes, fun is just that... fun.

On employers checking up on my feed... hey, if they want to do that, they can do so. If they don't hire me because they don't like my scary personal life, I wish them well and hope that they can find a candidate whose life revolves around pleasing Sir Employer at all times. Because that right there is not me.

You pay for my skills and my time, not my entire life.

That costs a lot more than any employer is going to be willing to pay.

Plantwiz

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

....They were called Door games, and I'd rather play Tradewars 2002 and Legend of the Red Dragon ....

Now that's a blast from the past...I LOVED L.O.R.D!!! I found an emulated version several years ago, but just not the same as playing it on in a 'window' rather then a full 13" monochome monitor (and through a 2400 baud modem)...ah

I haven't fallen into Twitter or F@ceb00k or anything such site. Mostly, I think because I don't want to record every moment of my life, and I cannot imagine anyone cares to stalk every moment of my life. My friends know what I like and don't. I know that they like or don't and while many of the old folks (my friends) have foined F@ceb00k and share photos and such, I've seem to manage just fine without doing so...the photos they really want to share with me, they either show me or e-mail me.

One thing I do have a concern about is all the businesses who are jumping on 'social media' and think they'll lose sales by not doing so...we'll not all of their customer base WILL choose to participate via social media and if these business elminate other means of adverstising, then they'll lose my business (and those of us who won't play the social media game) because I'll patronize the businesses who still can utilize face-to-face skills.

I'm not against the technology, but like cell phones, not 'everyone' needs one.

And yes, I'll continue to teach and set-up accounts for my clients, but I'm just not willing to blindly post my info across the web simply because the technology exists to do so.

And here's a thought (purely an example):

There was a time, when if you wanted to know what your neighbor did for a living (without actually speaking with them) or how much their taxes were or if they pulled permits for their home improvement work, etc... you needed to visit your library or assessor's office for this information. It's free to the public, but if you wanted to snoop, you needed to "GO" on purpose to obtain this sort of info. Today, you not only can case out the entire neighborhood via satellite, but you can pull the history on your neighbor...or a complete stranger and almost NO ONE ever sees you doing so. The techonology exists today to be a creep without leaving your own home (so basically a person can snoop on someone else without giving up at least equal privacy). Just doesn't seem right IMO.

Plantwiz wrote: »

One thing I do have a concern about is all the businesses who are jumping on 'social media' and think they'll lose sales by not doing so...we'll not all of their customer base WILL choose to participate via social media and if these business elminate other means of adverstising, then they'll lose my business (and those of us who won't play the social media game) because I'll patronize the businesses who still can utilize face-to-face skills.

This is an important point. The current hype around Twitter, Facebook, etc.. reminds me a lot of how everyone was on about Second Life being the Second Coming back in 2006....how's that going these days?

MS

Slowhand

eMeS wrote: »

This is an important point. The current hype around Twitter, Facebook, etc.. reminds me a lot of how everyone was on about Second Life being the Second Coming back in 2006....how's that going these days?

MS

Funny thing about that. I joined Second Life back in 2007 at the insistence of some friends, who promptly left. Then I found some new people to hang out with. After a while, chatting and hanging out got to be a little dull, so I left. A few months ago I logged in to see if anyone was still around. . . sadly, they were.

Forsaken_GA

Plantwiz wrote: »

Now that's a blast from the past...I LOVED L.O.R.D!!! I found an emulated version several years ago, but just not the same as playing it on in a 'window' rather then a full 13" monochome monitor (and through a 2400 baud modem)...ah

There's a php remake called Legend of the Green Dragon, and it's amusing, but I agree, not the same.

I really miss the community the BBS's fostered. In my area code, it was like an unwritten rule that the sysop was not allowed to play their own door games, so we all called each others BBS's in order to play, and got to know each other pretty well. Some of my closest friendships are from that period, and still endure today.

One thing I do have a concern about is all the businesses who are jumping on 'social media' and think they'll lose sales by not doing so...we'll not all of their customer base WILL choose to participate via social media and if these business elminate other means of adverstising, then they'll lose my business (and those of us who won't play the social media game) because I'll patronize the businesses who still can utilize face-to-face skills.

I think a company using Facebook is hilarious. I mean, seriously, if someones heard of your company, you should be steering them towards your web page, not your Facebook page. That's like building your corporate website on Geocities.

Twitter I actually do see some value to for companies. It's a quick way to get the notice out about an outage, for example. When The Planet had that data center fire in Houston a few years back, Twitter was pretty useful for keeping their customers informed while their own systems were informed. And anything a company decides to throw in Twitter may be one less thing that they decide to send out in their spammy newsletters.

Twitter for individuals? I don't care if you're taking a poop! And yeah, occasionally, some folks may post interesting links.... but from what I've seen of twitter feeds that are fed into a web page or something, they're usually links that I've already seen at some other news aggregator, so the value is.... dubios.

There was a time, when if you wanted to know what your neighbor did for a living (without actually speaking with them) or how much their taxes were or if they pulled permits for their home improvement work, etc... you needed to visit your library or assessor's office for this information. It's free to the public, but if you wanted to snoop, you needed to "GO" on purpose to obtain this sort of info. Today, you not only can case out the entire neighborhood via satellite, but you can pull the history on your neighbor...or a complete stranger and almost NO ONE ever sees you doing so. The techonology exists today to be a creep without leaving your own home (so basically a person can snoop on someone else without giving up at least equal privacy). Just doesn't seem right IMO.

Personally, I like the idea of having so much information at my fingertips, but I'm an evil bastard. I fully agree with you in that there's such a thing as too much information, and it's frustrating to see people give up their privacy in the name of convenience. It's also frustrating to see the way social media is eroding soft skills, people are losing the art of communicating face to face, but I haven't read this thread in it's entirety, and I'd be very surprised if that subject hasn't already been beaten to death, so I'll shush!

Plantwiz

eMeS wrote: »

This is an important point. The current hype around Twitter, Facebook, etc.. reminds me a lot of how everyone was on about Second Life being the Second Coming back in 2006....how's that going these days?

MS

I was just thinking about Second Life the other day and how I was reading ( was that back in 2006 ?? WOW)...reading that Second Life was going to 're-invent' people and their careers! People who were 'losers' in the real world were now bigtime executives with 'everything'. One of my co-workers was even looking into Second Life because he knew he'd be 'successful' in that world. As far as I know, he didn't make that jump (or wasn't any more successful then he was here) but yes, that trend died out quickly.

Anonymouse

Wow I had completely forgotten about Second Life. It never interested me at the time. I think more people in my age group were interested in Myspace back then. I remember Second Life being mentioned in the Mike Meyers A+ book I used for studying haha.

Paul Boz

eMeS wrote: »

This is an important point. The current hype around Twitter, Facebook, etc.. reminds me a lot of how everyone was on about Second Life being the Second Coming back in 2006....how's that going these days?

MS

They key difference is ease of market penetration. Just looking at my twitter stream now, 90% of people are updating from Android, iPhone, BB, or some other mobile device. You can't play second life on a cellphone and it requires a generally higher level of computer competency compared to snagging an app off of a mobile market. Twitter isn't going anywhere (I don't know if that's good or bad).

I originally stayed away from Twitter for the first few years of the service but quickly adopted when I realized the sheer volume of information you could index using it. I use Twitter to stay on top of big events in the security industry, follow several vendors for their bug releases and flash notifications, and on a casual side follow industry leaders. Its incredible how accessible others become over Twitter. While I agree that people who blow up 200 tweets a day about random **** no one cares about are the clear negative to the service, I've found far too many practical uses to completely write it off.

In this age of mobile marketing it’s important for a company to use as many avenues to communicate with potential consumers as possible. Just like companies used to heavily invest in print media when everyone in America was buying news papers and magazines, companies now spend a significant portion of their marketing budget on digital media. 150,000,000 people have profiles on Facebook. 41% of the American population maintains a Facebook page. On a smaller scale, 17,000,000 people actively maintain twitter accounts. That’s still around 7% of our population. I think it’s foolish to completely write off such a huge venue for market penetration. You may not have to agree with the technology on a philosophical level but from a business point of view it makes complete sense.

Mike-Mike

yeah, to put it less eloquently than Paul, some of you all are poo-poo'ing facebook like it's a fad, it's a massive juggernaut.. There was no movies about Second Life or Friendster, etc... like I said, I'm off of it, No FB for me... but I'm on a college campus right now and 90% of the monitor's I walk by are on FB...

Plantwiz

Paul Boz wrote: »

.... You may not have to agree with the technology on a philosophical level but from a business point of view it makes complete sense.

I agree.

What I don't appreciate is the business I support limiting their marketing methods to FB and Twitter. I'm happy with e-mail notifications rather then receiving junk mail. I think that makes sense. However, I do not see why I should be pressured into a FB or T account in order to be a customer in good standing when after many years...I've very likely invested hundreds to thousands of dollars into some of the businesses.

There is room for both, but I do personally lose confidence in businesses (and elementary schools) who are forcing customers (parents) into using social media apps as a means to communciate. An organization who is targeting a broad audience and fails to utilize multiple communication methods has failed their customers (or parents in the case of a school). [and FWIW, I don't mind a college communicating in this manner, I find it inappropriate for an elementary - high school to communicate to parents in this fashion].

Paul Boz wrote: »

In this age of mobile marketing it’s important for a company to use as many avenues to communicate with potential consumers as possible.

Nonsense. The best communication is targeted to a specific audience. What you're saying here is in my opinion the source of many of our problems these days. We are bombarded by constant, un-targeted, nonsense messages that do nothing to truly link service providers with their customers.

If you're getting something out of it then that's great....I just don't get it, and I think that a lot of the people that claim to (not referring to you here) are simply bandwagon jumpers that are onto whatever the next fad is.

Paul Boz wrote: »

Just like companies used to heavily invest in print media when everyone in America was buying news papers and magazines, companies now spend a significant portion of their marketing budget on digital media. 150,000,000 people have profiles on Facebook. 41% of the American population maintains a Facebook page. On a smaller scale, 17,000,000 people actively maintain twitter accounts. That’s still around 7% of our population. I think it’s foolish to completely write off such a huge venue for market penetration. You may not have to agree with the technology on a philosophical level but from a business point of view it makes complete sense.

I agree, the numbers are there, it's not really arguable. However, popularity doesn't equal functionality. There is not a guarantee than any of those people are actually reading any of it; that they aren't just clearing the message or whatever. Have we really degraded to the point that we can only communicate via a series of messages that are of limited length? You couldn't communicate the post that I quoted easily on Twitter.

IMO Twitter is evidence of sloth. It's easier to just send messages to an unlimited audience without doing the work involved in targeting your message to the needs of the audience.

It also bothers me when I see someone equate "Twitter" with "technology".....

Plus, every time someone tweets, God kills a puppy. It's a fact.

Back to seriousness....I really truly believe that George Orwell got it wrong, and Huxley was right when he basically said that we would entertain ourselves into impotence.

http://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060850523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286420686&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Revisited-P-S/dp/0060898526/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286420713&sr=1-1

MS

Forsaken_GA

eMeS wrote: »

Plus, every time someone tweets, God kills a puppy. It's a fact.

Oh, in that case, it means a cat invented twitter