Online Networking: Private or Public?

A friend's teen daughter recently began a new job. After the first week or two, her immediate supervisor revealed to her that the company had reviewed her MySpace and Facebook profile pages before making a job offer to her. The teen was shocked. Should she have been?

Is your employer online? How about your prospective employer?

Do You Have a MySpace, Facebook, Yuwie or YouTube Account?

MySpace, Facebook, Yuwie, YouTube, and similar sites are open to public viewing. Anyone who wishes to set up an account (usually for free) can quickly access millions of individual profile pages.

Individuals post graphics, photos, videos, music and even written material for other users to view and hear. Most members display their friends' thumbnail photos, as active links to their friends' profile pages. Many also allow friends' and visitors' comments to appear on their own profile pages as well.

Here is what this means, just in case any question still exists. Anyone who wishes to do so can easily access an individual's profile page.

Online Equals Open.

Parents, teachers, school administrators, college admissions staffers, prospective employers and even pastors are free to peruse your page. Whether you like it or not, and whether you agree philosophically with the idea, these folks are at liberty to look at anything you post online.

Incidentally, the same freedom exists for material you publish in a blog, on a writing site like Associated Content, in a website guest book or in other online communities. If you put it out there on the internet, you simply cannot expect folks not to view it.

Outside the office, employers are individuals as well. They possess the same rights to the internet that you do, and they are quite likely as capable of surfing as you are. It would be naive to assume such folks could observe your online postings without it affecting their opinions about your personal character and professionalism.