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.

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.