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Your Ex-CoWorkers Will Kill Facebook
Random BedHead Ed writes "Cory Doctorow writes about the downside of social networking on the Information Week site, with a focus on Facebook. While he starts with some minor but insightful quibbles, he quickly moves to a critique of the core of social networking: 'Imagine how creepy it would be to wander into a co-worker's cubicle and discover the wall covered with tiny photos of everyone in the office, ranked by 'friend' and 'foe,' with the top eight friends elevated to a small shrine decorated with Post-It roses and hearts.' Do you really want to add your boss and coworkers to your friends list? (And more to the point, do you really have a choice?)"
How many people thought about this 12 years ago and have maintained separate online identities for Work and Recreation?
I did.
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Maybe just don't use it. What is your company going to do, fire you for not wasting work time creating a virtual soap opera?
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Facebook has already got this figured out... they're testing a new feature that lets you create alternate personalities to keep your various personalities away from each other...
Schizophrenia is a perfectly reasonable response to modern society, if you've accepted that you can't change it and you want to live at any cost, I suppose...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
It's beyond me why people are so quick to spill their most personal secrets on a social networking site; it just seems to me that people have no idea that anything that they say, type or post is often available for the world to see. Sorry but I don't like that kind of invasion of privacy and I never have...I can remember being 13 years, being on AOL and being wary to give any personal information out that I would want to be in public domain, but I seem to be very alone in this idea in my peer group (26 now).
Heck, I've even had people I used to work attempt to add me to their friends list and I rejected them. Then again I'm one of those people who only accepts invitations from people I know in the flesh, don't allow myself to be searched for and never post anything on the profile anyways.
Your Ex-CoWorkers Will Kill Facebook
At least those idiots will do something right before they die.
Speedy thing goes in; speedy thing comes out.
Wait 'till they find out about Fuckbook...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You might say, well if I'm friendly outside of work with one coworker and add that one person to a friends list, but then that person adds every one in the office, including the big boss, to his/her list, can't those people then link back to my page?
Well, yeah, welcome to society. This is not news. This is not technology related. Folks interact. Something you share with one person may in turn be shared by that person with others. It's called discretion, get some.
George: You have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world then George Costanza as you know him ceases to exist. You see, right now I have Relationship George. But there is also Independent George. That's the George you know, the George you grew up with... Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George.
Jerry: I love that George.
George: Me too, and he's dying. If Relationship George walks through this door, he will kill Independent George. A George divided against itself cannot stand!
Developers: We can use your help.
The problem with social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace; et all, is not in regards to their intended use. Rather, it is in the fact that often times in our "new" professional working environment, we have the view that being professional, is the same as being social. So, as a manager, my employees actually feel hurt when I deny them access to my private, closed access Myspace page. When asked I reply with "company policy, sorry" but the reality is, the old rules of there being a division between work and home is dead. If I try to separate my personal life from my professional life, my employees feel an emotional detachment from me, which hinders professional development. However, if I were to include them into my social networking, they would quickly confuse my personal choices with their professional behavior. For example my peers have received feedback during coaching conversations to employees "how can you try to coach me on appropriate topics of conversation while at work when last night your status was 'i need a blunt and some cock tonight'". Details aside, yes it is the case that the difference is at work vs not at work, but people confuse that happens in our personal lives with what happens in our professional lives. My father worked at IBM for nearly 40 years, and the rules he lived by in the office were the complete and total opposite to what I experience at another Fortune 500 company. It is unfortunate that my 17-25 year old employees simply do not see the difference between work and play. More worrisome is my 25-40 year old peers who cave to the pressures to involve the employees in their social networking sites, and have serious professional consequences when something goes awry, or someone decides to create drama. A possible solution posed by some companies is to create internal professional networking sites. Managed by company employees and governed by existing policy, these sites work to enable managers to have professional relationships with employees, while maintaining work-life balance. However, Myspace is compelling, as is sex, and lurid details about interesting people's lives (or uninteresting lives as the case may be). Simply stated, bad bosses use Myspace as a way to monitor or snoop on employees personal lives. As such, everyone, Managers and Employees alike should view it with a healthy dose of skepticism and distrust.
Will they hurry the f*ck up already?!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
LinkedIn doesn't do ranking, and it certainly doesn't let you throw random goofy nonsense into your profile. Most peoples facebook connections look like a merge of the user's local area of the org chart of every company they've worked at.
If I ever go onto facebook, I don't think I'd go "ranking" my friends. Talk about an unfeature.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war.
So, these services should just automatically de-list people after a year or two, unless you consciously refresh them.
Done.
Jesus Christ, dude. Would you knock it off with the faux-Onion link whoring? The first couple were alright, but it's just getting lame now. We get it - you've got an Onion-style satire site with a tech slant. Please quit spamming every article with disguised links to your site - it confuses trigger-happy moderators into thinking your posting something, you know, relevant or informative.
Mods - the parent post is just a link to his own satire site. His post is sitting at +5 Interesting right now and doesn't address the issue raised in the original article in any way whatsoever. Please don't reward affiliate linkwhoring with Interesting or Insightful mods.
"You and your third dimension."
I've already run into this issue with my Xbox360 profile. Several coworkers and I were all on each others friends list to play Gears of War against each other. Then my boss joined us which was fine. Then a month after that I get a friend request from the CEO of the company. At first I thought nothing of it, until the CEO commented on how later I was up on the 360 a few nights ago and how I was 10 minutes late the next day. Now I have two accounts, but what sucks is all my achievements, unlocked content, etc are on the original account. Also I've given up my myspace account(didn't use it much to begin with) because some stalker chick at work kept sending me friend requests and making comments about my profile and pictures. I really don't think this social networking stuff is for the better.
no linkedin was killed by john wilkes facebooth