I saw an episode of South Park the other day that kind of made me laugh. I’m not a fan of the show, and I don’t usually even watch, but it happened to be on. Oh, and I’m a sucker for social media humor. One of my favorite episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia (a show I do actually like) was the “Anti-Social Network.” If you missed it, you’ve got to check it out on Hulu… It’s hysterical.
Anyway, back to South Park. I didn’t watch the whole show, so I won’t even try to do an episode recap, but let’s just say there were “friending” and “unfriending” issues. One of the characters (not a main character) was said to be so lonely that he doesn’t even have one Facebook friend. The plot went on from there, but I just love when shows point out how ridiculous we sometimes act.
People shouldn’t judge you in real life based on how many Facebook friends you have, but they do. People also shouldn’t join “Add me” groups and add thousands of strangers to their page in an attempt to seem more popular, but they do. Ever since the early days of Myspace, social media has been somewhat of a popularity contest. Personally, I have under 100 Facebook friends because I like to keep it to people I actually know (and kind of even like).
But, I see others getting caught up with thousands of “friends.” Really? Do you really have four thousand friends? Your birthday parties must be super expensive. And you probably need to hire a police officer to work the door. But on the other hand, I guess you get an obscene amount of gifts, right?
Social media has become a trend that almost everyone participates in. But how easy is it to get sucked into social media to the point where you are actually addicted? Probably easier than you would think.
For centuries, some people have been addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. But, studies show that it is actually easier to become addicted to social media than to the cigarettes and alcohol. The School of Business at the University of Chicago studied social media addiction in people between the ages of 18 and 85. They did the study in Germany and determined that people are more likely to give in to their social media craving than any other craving they might have.
The study involved polling 10,558 Blackberry users seven times per day for 14 hours every day. The poll went on for a week, and the Blackberry users were asked if they had felt any desires in the previous half an hour. They also had to state whether or not they gave into their desire and how strong the desire was on a scale of mild to irresistible. Over 7,000 desires were reported and of all the desires people had, the desire to use social media was the one that people failed to resist. The social media sites that proved the most irresistible were Google+, Groupon, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.
The man who led the team that ran this study said that people have a harder time resisting social media because there are no consequences to using it, as opposed to the consequences of smoking and drinking. The study found that social media has a much higher addiction rate than alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sports, spending money or even sexual activity.
This research led me to wonder whether I have a social media addiction. Oh, heck; I probably do. Maybe I should start a support group. Would you join?
Ever
since MySpace and Facebook emerged onto the scene, it’s become very apparent
that social media is a force to be reckoned with. But unlike in the early days
of social media, you’ll find that more companies, from large brands to small
businesses, are making their presence felt in this arena. What does that mean
for you? Well, it could potentially mean a career. If you searched for the term
“social media” on Monster.com five years ago, you wouldn’t have seen many jobs.
Do the same thing today and you’ll see that you’ve got a lot of options. So,
how do you position yourself as an expert in this field? Be prepared to show
the fruits of your labor.
It’s
not enough to say “I have Facebook and Twitter accounts.” Um yeah, who doesn’t?
Do a Google search for your name and see what comes up. Your Facebook and
Twitter (and Google + and LinkedIn and any other social networking sites you
may frequent) pages should be on the first page of search results. For most
people, this will happen pretty naturally. You just need to setup the accounts
with your name and use them. For those with common names or celebrity names,
this might be a little challenging. For
example, if your name happens to be Barack Obama, well, you might have to find
another way to show results.
Make
sure your social networking accounts are impressive. It’s okay if you use
Facebook for personal interactions. You don’t have to include it as long as you
have other social networking sites that are impressive. If you want a career in
social networking, you should have a Twitter account with at least one thousand
followers. More is better, but quality counts too. You should also tweet daily
and interact with your followers. This will give you a Klout or Kred score to be
proud of. Feel free to mention your score to potential employers, but they’ll
probably check anyway. Just keep in mind that this advice works best when you’re
looking for a career in social media or marketing. If you’re looking for a job
as a tattoo artist, your employer will care more about your work portfolio than
your Kred score.
Share
your social media stats with any potential employer. There are apps that will
monitor your accounts and present you with charts that detail how influential
you really are online (in greater detail than Klout or Kred). Most apps track
twitter, but there are some that will track your other interactions too. Such
an app might tell you how likely your tweets are to be retweeted or replied to.
They might also tell you how often people click on links that you’ve posted.
Your potential employer will want to know that you are actually influencing
others online about topics related to their company. Treat this like any other
job application and show them what they want to see. The greater your online
presence, the greater chance you’ll have of being hired.
As a college student, you wear many hats (so-to-speak, and maybe literally too). You have your social life which involves going out and party on the weekends among other things, your school life, which revolves around studies, and your family life, which is pretty tame. On the web, those three worlds can often collide. Mom friends you on Facebook, your friends tag you in embarrassing photos and you post interesting tidbits that you’ve learned while doing a research paper. Most people are pretty good at managing these parts of their lives without any security breaches. But, what happens when they release facial recognition software onto the interwebs? My guess is, all hell will break loose.
The folks at Google have that technology down, but for the moment (fortunately for us), they are using it responsibly. If you’re a member of Google+, you can decide if you want to enable facial recognition software for your account. If you decide to enable it, Google will scour your friends’ accounts for pictures of you. When it finds them, you’ll automatically be tagged. I can’t imagine it’s always perfect, but it’s a pretty intriguing concept. Actually, I can’t wait to try it. Unfortunately, my friends haven’t made their way to Google+ just yet.
Interestingly, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google disclosed during an interview that the facial recognition software is the first software Google ever held back from release for fear of misuse. It’s a really interesting concept. I don’t doubt that they can scour the entire web for pictures of me if they can find them in the Google+ userbase. I’m just intrigued to see what’s out there. But, like most people, I’ll probably want to recover any old pictures that are dug up. I have to say, though, I just glad this wasn’t around when I was in college. Not to make myself sound too old, but most cell phones didn’t even have cameras back then, so I should be pretty safe.
It’s an interesting time that we live in. It all just makes you realize that anything you do can end up on a social network like Google+ or Facebook, and there are more and more ways that it can be associated back to you. I guess that old advice “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” has a little more meaning these days. But on the other hand, I can really see the benefit to this facial recognition software for anyone who is currently in college learning how to become a CIA agent. It will be really hard for criminals to hide from the law with so much technology around.
Ever since your mom set up that Facebook profile, she has been friend requesting you, am I right? Who wants their mom to see the truth about what they did last night, really? Some kids actually do, and I think that’s rather cool, but sharing your online life with the parents isn’t for everyone. So, you have two options. One, you can keep ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away. Two, you can share only the parts of your profile that you want her to see. Problem solved? Let’s take a closer look.
1. You can ignore your mom’s Facebook requests, but that will only make her more intrigued by what she’s missing. You know the drill; if you act like you’ve got something to hide, people are going to start thinking you have something to hide. According to a recent survey, 73 percent of moms who aren’t friends with their children on Facebook view their profiles from someone else’s account. That’s right; while you think your mom is at work taking care of her ever-important administrative assistant duties, she’s actually spying on your Facebook account. Oh yeah; you can run, but you can’t hide. Does it make sense now how your mom seems to know everything about your life?
2. If you share only the parts of your profile you’d like her to see, you may appease the situation somewhat. But, be careful not to overdo it. Hiding everything but your name and contact info sends the same message as ignoring her friend requests. So, you might want to share your pictures, but not give her access to other people’s pictures that you’re tagged in. That just means you can’t post anything that you don’t want her to see, but it’s ok if other people do (as long as she’s not Facebook friends with them too).
3. Now, here’s the third super-stealthy option that I didn’t mention upfront: Start asking mom questions about her profile. You probably didn’t think much about what’s happening on mom’s page, but there may be a thing or two that she’s hiding from you. According to that same study (mentioned above) 46 percent of moms hide all or part of their profiles from their children. Say what? Time to turn the tables, my friend. Ask her to give you full access to her profile before you give her access to yours.
