Facebook and LinkedIn - if you don't do it, you're a dinosaur
 

That's the latest career advice from Money magazine. If you're in your forties and beyond, the way to be current is to embrace technology like FB and LinkedIn. I haven't found either to be all that helpful, frankly. FB is one big time suck. I get friend requests that I feel bad rejecting. Plus all those freaking Farmville and hugs notices are driving me up a wall, not to mention the inane daily updates on what someone had for supper last night. Who cares?!

Anyway, is anyone using FB or LinkedIn for something productive? Maybe I'm just not doing it right?

You can turn off the 'villes' . . .

And yes, we feel that our Pro product success has been helped by regular (very important) FB updates: new products, videos, reviews etc. If your customer is there, you should be there too.

Ian

Bull sheet...

I've no use for Facebook. If my friends really want to communicate with me, pick up a phone or e-mail me without sharing their thoughts with the rest of the "friends."

LinkedIn --- why? If you don't keep in touch with people who you feel can help you in your career, why would you think someone will go out of their way to help you if you needed help..esp. finding a job?

Money magazine is often full of sheet. Articles that are only relavent in a very very small corner where the author thinks represents the universe. We use to get it Money, but let the subscrition lapse.

I vote no... FB is useless unless you need to know what your friend had for lunch or that fluffy pooped on the rug last night.

On the other hand I did meet my wife there so I suppose it has some redeeming value.

On the other other hand what is wrong with being a dinosaur? I hear they (we) may be making a comeback!

They will mention that you should embrace these sites then state that having revealing information may harm your chances of getting a job if you are tagged by an ax murderer.


So, why join if it opens up tons of liabilities?

Stopped reading Money. Awful, awful rag anymore.

You need to get over the obvious singular use and learn how to use it as a tool. If you're passive with it then it's no use. You need to work it.

My PHP guy will disagree with your position.

Took me 6 months to find the guy I wanted to hire. I had a very specific skill set in mind.

I sat down one day and punched my requirements into a Linked In search in the local area.

Kid was in his last year in college.

My CEO flipped when I told her how much I wanted to pay him. "He's not even out of school yet!" she said.

"True but he's been getting paid to do commercial code since he was 12. Think of him not as a 21 year old but a 31 year old with 10 years experience that is picking up another degree"

If I could get his ass out of bed before 10 am he'd be pretty much perfect.

i use both. neither are useful. both are stupid

I'm a T rex...don't twitter, don't facebook, don't want to...

I don't go to the freshman dance at the local high school, either...:rolleyes:

Even the financial news in Money is old news. They need something to fill the space. Maybe they think they can persuade the 20-30 somethings that they are a very hip (can I still say that?) magazine.

I'll give you that. If I was in HR or often needing to hire someone, yes. But the 99% of the time, it's just a bunch of folks trying to secure a plan B incase they are out of a job.

Regarding your 21 yr old hire...I've often stated that a kid out of college could do a better job than at least 50% of the professionals out there with 10-30 years of experience. I've had managers disagree with this thinking to only end up hiring a "regret." There is nothing worst than having a highly paid "experienced" worker who is less efficient, less flexible, less progressive, less motivated and high on their senior status than the rest of the team. It happens too often. It's bad for moral and a terrible drain on the department budget.

It truly was a waste of money when I subscribed to that rag. Apparently in "their world" everyone makes over $200K a year, has a million dollars saved up for retirement and they just need to know how to make it last.

Please please please tell me how...

FB can be used to monitor your kids

Hover over it & a Hide button appears on the right. Click it & make your choice.

Ian

my facebook has nothing on it....literally. i use it as a vehicle for people to conveniently send me an email. 90% of my contacts are my pilots. i understand the value of it for business (i've been on it since 2004...back when you had to be a student at just a handful of colleges), but it drives me nuts when i see commercials that say "for more information, check us out on facebook!!"

....why wouldn't i just go to their company-specific website? it's putting an extra step in it for me.

as much as i embrace technology, the whole facebook thing is getting out of control.

i had a girl who seriously had a mental breakdown, because she thought that i had "blocked" her from the content on my facebook page. (remember, i just have nothing on there).

people let this crap run their lives.

southpark did a great episode on it....making fun of the absurdity of it all.

We use FB, Twitter all the time.

Again it's how you use it and what you have as on objective.

When you combine them with even something as simple as bit.ly, a trackable url shortner, you get all sorts of data on who is viewing/sharing/adding to the virility of your message and helps define your demographic.

But you can't do it casually. You need to work it daily, review your data daily, try new things and compare results.

They are no Magic cures. You need to work them.

I'm in marketing. Linkedin is, at times, an invaluable tool for penetrating new accounts.

I've used linkedin, but I get emails to my work email and can't figure out how to add the person to my linkedin account with my home email. Any suggestions?

I have no use for either one. Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Twitter? All a bunch of crap. I have no use for it. The first three are all ways of SCREAMING to get your identity stolen on top of it.

Besides, I value a certain degree of anonymity. And I tend to not particularly like most people anyway - I don't see the value in going out of my way to socialize with more of them.

Agree as well, same for most other money type of magazines. Anything they can tell you is outdated by the time it gets to your mail box.

this is a UI feature that needs to be more broadly implemented in life

Yes, wouldn't it be loverly.

Ian

I like FB for keeping up with my friends and family.

I also like to create photo galleries.


KT

Funny thing, just at the ATT phone store. They told me something new. A certain airline, not gonna say who, is sending out job inquiries to people via email.

If you have a BB or Iphone you usually reply faster than if you are not at home sitting on the computer. Jobs are awarded based on who replies fastest...

Interesting way to get tech savy people onboard.

I just joined Facebook and love that I can see what my family and friends are up to. I haven't posted much on it yet, but hopefully this will be a way my family can see what I'm up to, now that I moved here to the US.

I also have a few "follow us on Facebook pages", which is handy for getting updates on some of the companies and things I am interested in.

What's not to like about it?

Q): The website asked me "What are you doing right now?"
A): "Picking dewberrys while responding to internet questions".
Mabye I'm getting old, but why feed the system?

On another website I "belong" to I asked a much-needed and serious question.
The topic never posted.


Familiarity breeds comtempt.

But you naysayers just don’t get it. There is a growing audience. And it is not you . . . yet. Was anybody around when the internets were launched? We didn't NEED it either.

I was at the broadcasters' show in Vegas & I was standing in a major Starbucks line. 20+ minutes for java. I watched the people in line. 90% were staring at their phone. Even people that were with people were staring at their phones & sometimes even each other’s phone. FB, Twitter et al are filling a void giving that 90% something besides email as content. Do they NEED it? Of course not.

Even though your intent on FB etc might start as strictly social, you will keep bumping into commercial content. And that is why we & others like us are there & investing the time.

Ian

I just signed up at Facebook and took a look around. Didn't see anybody from I wanted to get in touch with, so I deleted the account.

Besides, if my 14 and 16 YO's are into it, I don't need it...

My wife took over my page and set up a cafe and farm to help support hers. Now all my people are sending me sht. Oh well business is booming at the cafe and the farm is flourishing. Anyone have a brick for my stable?
:rolleyes:

Protect your children from registering themselves.

Disagree...

Sorry; if your kids are into it that is exactly why you need to be too.

One of the earlier posts asked how to monitor your kids on facebook...that's easy. A stipulation of their facebook account must be that YOU go in and set up the privacy settings etc and YOU are a facebook friend....and YOU should have their log in details as well.

These are the rules I set for Charlotte...I also check what photos are being loaded etc; who is tagging what and what's generally going on her 'wall'. Is this snooping or an invasion of privacy? Not in my book...and not in hers either. In fact a lot of her friends (the kids) send me friend requests too. And some of the other Mums are on Charlotte's friends list. The kids don't seem to mind at all that we're 'involved'.

If this changes as time goes on...I have a solution. As we pay the bills for internet, mobile phones etc...we'll simply switch it off if the rules get broken. Charlotte's pc will just get cut off the net and I'll bar internet service on her mobile. Am I a dinosaur of a parent at times?...hell yes. Particularly when it comes to safety issues such as naiive internet usage. Will I have a battle about this with her? Of course....BTDT...with the older one....and still a younger one to come after her too...but certain rules will always be steadfast in this household no matter what.

Oh and another thing...none of this 'friends of friends' BS....all her settings are for friends only and the rule is if she doesn't actually know someone, she doesn't 'befriend' them. Only friends can see her wall and SHE has to request new friends; some idiot who is a friend of a facebook friend cannot see her wall or send her a friend request. She also knows she doesn't HAVE to accept every friend request. She has some sitting there now from kids she knows whom she doesn't particularly like and they don't really like her...she doesn't need to accept them...has discovered the ignore button already.

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So...it helps to be a tool? :confused: Well then, I'm gonna continue to not use it...as a Luddite! :mad:

You tool! :D

Unless, of course, you're a twit.

Early on in the history of this goofy phenomenon I asked someone if they twitter. The guy gave me a dirty look and said sharply, "Nooo! I "tweet". I laughed and said, "Sooo, you're a tweeter! Hey! I'm a woofer!" He gave me another dirty look. What a twit. :)

+1,000

I see absolutely NO good coming out of kids being on these sorts of sites.

They can go on them when they're 18 if they're so inclined.

I like FB for personal use only, but will not use it professionally. A lot of my co-workers use it to push our products and I find it to be a real turn off, so I remove them from my page view if they're friends of mine. Another former co-worker now sells Audis for a dealership in LA and his every post is about this or that new incentive or sale. I couldn't care less, so I removed him from my view too.

FB and Twitter are the new holy grails of PR though. There are few companies out there with dedicated PR or communications staffs who don't have FB and Twitter links on their websites. I went to an event where the featured speaker, a very well-known guy in the PR world, was telling us about being stuck on a Delta flight that wasn't taking off due to mechanical issues and also wasn't letting anyone off the plane. This guy posted about it via his Blackberry on Twitter, where he has many thousands of followers, and within minutes Southwest Airlines offered to take everyone on the plane to wherever they were supposed to go. That's one of those cases where Delta really dropped the ball by not having someone on staff watching Twitter as a PR crisis unfolded. With all this realtime updating, companies really need to be on the ball.

They show us what's on there and the settings are on private, so we have a pretty good idea of what's going on. Most pictures taken and posted are when we are around to observe. They each have a close group of friends (they won't even befriend some of their cousins :D).

The older one is a straght A student all her life, honor role, Beta Club, National Honor Society, year round/high school Swim Team, French Club, etc.

The younger one is a straight A student and year round/high school Swim Team (individual national ranked and boys high school state swim champs last year).

Having said that, we'll plug the plug on them in a heart beat for anything we deem inappropriate...

There's a website I read about recently (can't recall the name) that scours Facebook and lets the world know where you live and when you will be (or were) out of town/travelling based on your posts. Think someone posted it here recently.

My stupid sister lists her full date-of-birth, mother's (maiden) name, employer and a ton of other identifying information. She can't figure out how someone got into her bank account and cleaned it out... :rolleyes:

If you approach Facebook, Twitter, etc fresh as a tool for business, then they are VERY effective for the small business owner. It's absolutely important to keep any business stuff completely separate from any personal stuff. My better half uses both (and text messages) for her business, and it's been great. Lots of connection from other local businesses, lots of referrals going back and forth, lots of people who are getting more and more into supporting local companies. She keeps them all updated as well as her website, and each works off of the others. Newsletters, hours of operation, all sorts of stuff can quickly be sent out to all of your clients. She puts coupons on Twitter ("for the next 4 hours half price" kinda stuff), and it gets passed back and forth by other business owners, who often toss in their own coupons. You can't do that kind of stuff without the new social media.

Those that outright refuse to use them are hurting themselves. Might as well take down any website and e-mail for your company.

Bringing this one back from the dead...

In an effort to find people that I have worked with in the past for posssible career opportunities, I started a LinkedIn account. Nothing has come of it yet, but I have connected with people that I haven't seen or heard from in years.

It has tools such as job search functions, question and answer sections, etc. that might seem helpful and doesn't appear to be a social site like FB, although I wonder how some members have so many connections.

Anybody else on it?