I am currently signed up with Facebook or as people will generally say, I’m on Facebook. I first heard the term “Facebook” from my younger brother in a conversation sometime in 2006, when he casually used the brand name as a verb. That evening I got on the Internet and I found the site. I wanted to experiment by creating an account, but I had to fill out a form to do that. When it came to the question on what high school I attended, I started typing my school name and to my amazement, the full name popped up – as unknown as the school was. It didn’t end there. By the time I was through with answering the questions, it immediately brought up suggestions of friends I may know. Well, I knew all of them and was eager to reconnect with every last one of them. I was so amazed by how smart this web application was and how much more it could do for me. To the question of why I joined Facebook, I guess it’s safe to say curiosity.
Initially, I saw Facebook as a multipurpose tool. It had the potential to replace a number of my daily Internet operations. For instance, yahoo messenger satisfied my need for instant messaging at the time. It still does as we speak though because Yahoo seems to perform better – especially in poor connections. It replaced my need to ask friends what is going on with them because I could check on their activities, their location, current pictures, current status and so on all by myself. Most importantly, I noticed that all I need to do to find long lost friends was to stay on the network and they will keep being suggested to me or friends may even find me by themselves. These days however, Facebook increasingly seems very scary to me and it’s only a matter of time before I close my account. Every now and then there are updates to be accepted with a lot of legal adherence after which your privacy settings are automatically updated and it keeps getting more complicated than when it first started. In the hands of a wrong party with an agenda, the potential use of the huge data of information already created by this mega site is both destructive at the individual level and catastrophic at the communal.
I seldom socialize in the real world. It’s not that I don’t want to, but the avenues and time for socializing always seem a long way from my reach. Having said that, I assume Facebook as a high percentage contributor to my social presence. Before I found Facebook, the time was never right to start meeting people and as time went by, it became increasingly difficult to make true friends. So far, Facebook is the only avenue where my chance of becoming friends with a person becomes high just by remembering the person’s name and having common friends. However, I tend to play a passive role on Facebook even though my presence is registered. Apart from this, I still haven’t coined out a way to engage Facebook in my education or business. Most of my Facebook friends are simply personal friendships or relationships, who are taking the opportunity of a new avenue for reconnection.
People also use Facebook for reasons other than reconnections. Some individuals check out friends of their friends for prospective dates. Many individuals, businesses, non-profit organizations and others now use Facebook in public relations efforts and in fact, to part substitute for their use of the traditional media in promoting products, services or causes. Studies have shown that this means of communication is somewhat embraced by key marketing decision makers and is effective in reaching specific audience. This is because the medium targets specific audience. Still, Facebook allows you to “like” celebrities television shows and other events which enables you to follow them to receive status updates, about what episodes are airing, general and inside information which is unavailable to the general public.
Now, I’ve been having growing concerns about the privacy of information I put on Facebook. Facebook administrators as well as other concerned bodies constantly recommend for users to be discreet about the information they choose to include on the site, but certain personal information remains mandatory even for signing up on the site. It is a little disturbing to picture the person on the other end looking at my information. To make matters worse, all such inputs are made public by default, until the subscriber decides to activate certain privacy settings. Furthermore, hackers of all sorts continue to work at getting peoples information. The question of whether anyone’s personal information on Facebook remains private depends on the subscribers’ actions – not a default status, but the question of how safe this information is, is the subject of higher significance.
There are some rules of etiquette made to guide Internet users. In order to avoid a loss of privacy or awkward situations and since there are hardly any guidelines specific to social networks, I personally adapted some of those rules in posting information on social networks. These rules include, but are not limited to;
I seldom socialize in the real world. It’s not that I don’t want to, but the avenues and time for socializing always seem a long way from my reach. Having said that, I assume Facebook as a high percentage contributor to my social presence. Before I found Facebook, the time was never right to start meeting people and as time went by, it became increasingly difficult to make true friends. So far, Facebook is the only avenue where my chance of becoming friends with a person becomes high just by remembering the person’s name and having common friends. However, I tend to play a passive role on Facebook even though my presence is registered. Apart from this, I still haven’t coined out a way to engage Facebook in my education or business. Most of my Facebook friends are simply personal friendships or relationships, who are taking the opportunity of a new avenue for reconnection.
People also use Facebook for reasons other than reconnections. Some individuals check out friends of their friends for prospective dates. Many individuals, businesses, non-profit organizations and others now use Facebook in public relations efforts and in fact, to part substitute for their use of the traditional media in promoting products, services or causes. Studies have shown that this means of communication is somewhat embraced by key marketing decision makers and is effective in reaching specific audience. This is because the medium targets specific audience. Still, Facebook allows you to “like” celebrities television shows and other events which enables you to follow them to receive status updates, about what episodes are airing, general and inside information which is unavailable to the general public.
Now, I’ve been having growing concerns about the privacy of information I put on Facebook. Facebook administrators as well as other concerned bodies constantly recommend for users to be discreet about the information they choose to include on the site, but certain personal information remains mandatory even for signing up on the site. It is a little disturbing to picture the person on the other end looking at my information. To make matters worse, all such inputs are made public by default, until the subscriber decides to activate certain privacy settings. Furthermore, hackers of all sorts continue to work at getting peoples information. The question of whether anyone’s personal information on Facebook remains private depends on the subscribers’ actions – not a default status, but the question of how safe this information is, is the subject of higher significance.
There are some rules of etiquette made to guide Internet users. In order to avoid a loss of privacy or awkward situations and since there are hardly any guidelines specific to social networks, I personally adapted some of those rules in posting information on social networks. These rules include, but are not limited to;
· Being truthful in the information I provide about myself.
· Being selective about the information that I share.
· Considering the possible future consequences of any post I make on the Internet. I don’t post anything that I don't want my boss, future boss, current client, or potential clients to read.
· Never posting when I am exhausted, intoxicated, angry, or upset.
· Refraining from mixing personal and professional information in one same profile or using the same network for business and personal purposes.
I would recommend these same guidelines for every social network user, but more importantly to “think before they click.” Throughout my period of subscription on social networks, I haven’t experienced an awkward situations arising from posts I made.
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