Linking Up with LinkedIn

This is reading that I knew something about; I've already had a LinkedIn profile for some time now, although I just recently got around to updating it and asking for several recommendations, which my friends and colleagues have generously agreed to provide. So what specifically works about LinkedIn?

The short answer is that in terms of networking for actual jobs and business opportunities, it's much easier to take seriously than Facebook, or especially MySpace. Look at any person's wall on Facebook: What do you see? General information, usually interests, some contact information, and then come the add-ons. My personal revulsion of Farmville aside, the average Facebook user's wall is chock full of polls, quizzes, trivias, graffiti walls, and maybe a few comments that would seem a little incriminating to employers.

What's on LinkedIn? Better privacy settings, an E-resume, recommendations, a chance to present oneself and display interests, not to mention get in touch with companies tech-savvy enough to be on LinkedIn. No whistles, bells, or irritating invitations to join Farmville.

As a second semester senior LinkedIn has and will continue to be invaluable to me in many ways, especially job searches and reaching out to people. If you don't have a LinkedIn account, I highly recommend making one for yourself.

The Value of Corporate Blogging

Our most recent reading, "On Corporate Blogging: Interview with Don Martelli of MS&L" struck a particular chord with me. While I have always understood the value of blogging as a social tool and a way where people can become connected, talk about important social issues, and get recognized for their writing prowess and their Internet skills, I had always had some trouble grasping the idea of corporate blogging. Surely, corporate bloggers would mostly deal with news updates and investor information which could be provided with press releases and E-mail alerts, right?

I'm glad I was ultimately very wrong. Don Martelli's interview is informative and well thought out, and this 15-year veteran obviously knows what he's doing - not surprising, given his work at a successful firm such as MS&L. It's true that information flow is 24/7, and consumer expectations hinge on a particular brand. A blog speaks to people in a way that a press release cannot - even if the blog is being run by a select group of individuals from a company's communications department, blogging provides for freedom and flexibility that more traditional media sources do not. Corporate blogging is still forming its own identity, but it has vast potential for brand power that we have not seen in previous iterations of corporate websites.

Is privacy a lie?

Like everyone else in our Social Networking and Business class, when we got our first glimpse of Facebook Mirror and learned that our privacy settings weren't nearly as protective as we might have thought, I quickly signed onto Facebook and raised security settings to near-maximum level. Our guest speaker's lecture was most illuminating. Despite setting virtually everything to "Friends Only" and ensuring that people could only see the bare bones aspects of my profile via Facebook Mirror, I couldn't quite get rid of that niggling little question: Would it be enough?

Back when Facebook started, when it was only available to students, privacy settings were simple: If you didn't allow everyone to see your profile, they simply couldn't. Facebook has truly grown into a mainstream Internet application in that privacy settings are not always what they appear to be, and there are often loopholes around privacy settings. What's more, there has been frequent difficulty in the past for people who have simply wanted to delete their profiles rather than simply disable them and leave all of their information on Facebook.

A recent episode of Law and Order dealt with the Internet, and Elliot Stabler, played by Christopher Meloni, suggests that posting pictures or any data on the Internet is effectively making it immortal. It is almost impossible to purge it from the Internet entirely unless you have total control over it, or it is relatively obscure. We've made ourselves immortal on Facebook, in a way - just look at how many people pay respects to the Facebook profiles of the recently deceased. However, we may also have to live with not having as much control of our privacy regarding our immortality as we thought.

The Internet: Making Us Stupid Since Our First Login

Elitism is, at its most basic level, a sense of superiority or confidence over others. It would be appropriate to define intellectual elites as those who have undergone significant academic training and rigorous studies, writing theses that an undergraduate Literature major such as myself would squirm at. Bravo for these people - discoveries and academic pursuits help make the world go round.

The problem is when academic elite transitions into academic elitism. As a very Web-oriented college student, I was particularly offended by needlessly inflammatory statements by intellectuals such as Doris Lessing, who boldly claim that the Internet is fragmenting our culture and making facts less certain. Let's make a brief analysis of Lessing's offending paragraph:

"We live in a fragmenting culture" Computers cause us to lack culture? Or does culture directly corroborate with facts? Lessing's primary concern seems to be the idea of alternative theories to facts; unfortunately, Lessing fails to acknowledge that alternative theories have been around since the dawn of history. Galileo's work was considered an alternative theory to the Catholic Church's dominant stance that the sun revolved around the Earth. All the Internet has done is make it easier for alternative theories and facts to be found. Aside from attracting more followers, it does not necessarily validate their merit.

So it's likely that people who have had years of education have "not read anything"? I wasn't aware that words on a computer screen were somehow inferior to the words in a book. If you want to go down that road, is a digital copy of Shakespeare somehow inferior to the Barnes and Noble classics edition? The lines Lessing draws are indistinguishable, which is especially ironic considering the articles we read for class were published on the Internet. I read texts for three of my other courses on the Internet, as well. Does Lessing mean to suggest that college professors around the country are not using the correct "format" for teaching?