How to Improve Your Facebook Profile: Play it Smart With Friends and Potential Employers

Think LinkedIn is the only social network that potential employers use to find and judge you? Wrong. Here's how to improve your Facebook profile to be more considerate to your friends, plus play it safe and smart with present and future work colleagues.

CONNECTIONS
Facebook
Wed, January 14, 2009CIO While it claims its roots in dorm rooms, Facebook has become a diverse place, like it or not. With 150 million users, the social networking site claims those people 30 years old or older as its fastest-growing age demographic. More than half of Facebook's users now are outside college. With the diversifying user base comes more complex Friend lists — a reality that presents opportunities and dangers as you blend your work and personal contacts in one place.

Many professionals may find themselves sharing intimate details of their lives with not only best friends but also work associates. Maybe you've got customers in your Facebook mix too, or even more dangerously, gabby family members who don't understand the merits behind the common term "too much information."

How you manage your Facebook profile, and what information you put into it to satisfy the desires and etiquette rules for all of these groups, while fulfilling your own wish to share, can be quite difficult.

CIO interviewed two experts who shared their insights on building a Facebook profile that keeps these issues in mind. Above all, most people need to look more closely at Facebook's under-utilized privacy settings, our experts urge. Here are five steps to improve your Facebook profile now, before you run into trouble.

Know Who You Want to Friend

Kirsten Dixson, a reputation management and online identity expert, says you should first carefully decide your criteria for adding Friends on Facebook. Friends, itself, is a pretty loaded word now. For most people, "contacts" is probably the more apt word.

If you're someone who strictly wants Facebook to be for only your close personal friends, while leaving a social network such as LinkedIn to connect with your professional contacts, then you need to be clear on that up front and hold to it. These are the people who will post something on your profile, or tag you in a picture.

"Your friends have such an impact on your Facebook profile," Dixson says. You need to ask, 'am I going to connect with social friends? Mix social and professional?' Will you friend anyone? There are no rights and wrongs. It what's right for you."

If you are someone who wants to reserve Facebook for close friends, Dixson says, then you need to draft a cordial response to work people who try to friend you.


Loading...
Applications MarketSpace
An Open Framework for Business Intelligence
Architecting Business Intelligence Applications for Change Learn more »
Adobe for Business Process Automation
Companies must be able to react to customer demands, competitive threats, and compliance requirements. Learn more »
Increase Customer Satisfaction and Lower TCO
With Adobe® LiveCycle® Enterprise Suite (ES2) software, organizations can easily deploy intuitive user experiences. Learn more »
Practical Approaches for Securing Web Applications
Enterprises understand the importance of securing web applications to protect critical corporate and customer data. What many don't understand, is how to implement a robust process for integrating security and risk management throughout the web application software development lifecycle. Learn more »
An Executive's Guide to Web Application Security
Since so many Web sites contain vulnerabilities, hackers can leverage a relatively simple exploit to gain access to a wealth of sensitive information, such as credit card data, social security numbers and health records. It's more important than ever to examine your Web application security, assess your vulnerability and take action to protect your business. Learn more »
Web Application Vulnerabilities
Security managers may work for midsize or large organizations; they may operate from anywhere on the globe. But inevitably, they share a common goal: to better manage the risks associated with their business infrastructure. Increasingly, Web application security plays a significant role in achieving that goal. Learn more »
Using ERP To Gain Competitive Advantage in a Tough Economy
For midsize enterprises, now is the perfect time to invest in a significant IT expansion - despite the economic climate. Learn more »
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

CRM Built for IT: The Executive Guide to Selecting CRM that Meets IT Needs

ROI of Application Delivery Controllers

White Paper: 4 Customer Service Myths

White Paper: Improve Agility with Operational Responsiveness

Removing the Barriers to IT Governance: How On-Demand Software Changes the Game

Cloud Computing--Latest Buzzword or a Glimpse of the Future?

A Balanced Approach to an Application Development Platform

Adobe® LiveCycle®solutions for intuitive user experience

10 Ways Excel Drives More Value from Your SAP Investment

What's New in SOA Suite 11g?

Unleash the Power of Java with Oracle JRockit Real Time

SOA Best Practices and Design Patterns

Application Grid: Ideal Platform for IT Consolidation

Ready to virtualize tier one applications? Check your virtualization maturity.

Learn how to provide complete Business Service Management.

Increase ROI of Your Application Portfolio

Return on Information: Google Enterprise Search pays you back. Get the facts.

VMware. The source for Business Infrastructure Virtualization.

ShoreTel tells businesses to untangle from competitors' complexity and turn to its brilliantly simple UC solution

See how AT&T can help protect your network.

Streamline IT Costs. Boost Performance with WAN Optimization.

Build your 1st app FREE with Force.com

TDWI checklist helps define data readiness for analytics. Download report.

eZine: A Roadmap to Reducing IT Complexity

Reduce risk, gain agility. See how Progress can help your business.

What's Next for Enterprise Resource Planning?

Gartner Magic Quadrant, Application Delivery Controllers 2009

White Paper: Managed Security for a Not-So-Secure World

SharePoint - Unchecked growth of content is unsustainable.

Focus Under Pressure: Why IT Governance Becomes Mission-Critical in a Down Economy

Should Your Email Live In The Cloud? A Comparative Cost Analysis

Adobe® LiveCycle® solutions for business process automation

Architecting Business Intelligence Applications for Change: The Open Solution

Increase UPS efficiency without sacrificing protection.

Unlocking the Mainframe: Modernizing Legacy System to SOA

State of the Data Integration Market

Enhance Customer Loyalty through Higher Responsiveness

Achieving Business Agility with Application Grid

Seven Ways ITIL Can Help You in an Economic Downturn

Four steps to populate your CMDB.

"Enterprise-Proven" is the Prerequisite for Enterprise SaaS Portal Solutions

AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service. Expand on demand

Trend Micro ranked #1 against real-world malware. Read more.

Webinar: Jump-start your in-house e-discovery with Ringtail QuickCull from FTI Technology

Top Five CIO Challenges

Read the RSA report: Security for Business Innovation

64-page prescriptive guide to security, compliance, and IT operations.

A Clear View Toward Virtualization

Virtualization Technology as a Business Solution

The rules of infrastructure management just changed.

 
 
RESOURCE CENTER