Myspace, facebook, twitter - Oh My!

Strange that I feel this way, since I am trying to get started blogging. But I just can not get into My Space, Facebook, Twitter and all of those social networking sites. I have accounts at those websites, but I don't do much with them. But some of my friends sure are into them, downloading the Facebook app to their blackberry, sending all of these strange requests out from drink requests to posting 25 things about themselves. I guess, having gone through some very public issues not too long ago, I just am a little too private to be very involved in these sites. But it makes me wonder, when my daughter (who is 8 now) starts to get into using the computer and socializing, what will the "normal" things on the internet be? Sharing so much information so publicly kind of scares me. I have seen my young cousins my space pages and the pictures on them.... WOW! I will have to insist that my daughter allow me to be her "friend" when she starts doing these things so I can at least monitor it.

And in this My Space and Facebook time, every news story involving a person gets checked on Facebook or My Space. Do they have a page? What do they have on their page? Or my favorite story so far, the pilot of the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River. Some very enterprising person made a Facebook page for him and he now has over half a million friends on his page that he had nothing to do with.

Or how about people updating their pages from work? My favorite example of this was during the Christmas season one of my best friends posted on her Facebook page "I am doing my Christmas shopping, shhhhhh don't tell my boss". How does she know her boss isn't going to see this post? This post impressed me because I thought she must be very confident that her boss a: would not see it and b: if her boss did see it the boss would not care. And since they frequently have beer Friday at her work, I imagine her boss wouldn't care! But I don't think all employers are like hers.

Either way, it is a very public and permanent way of socializing. Future employers, friends, and any other person that wants to look can find out all kinds of information about you that you would not normally share with strangers. Think twice before you put your information out there. Because it is there for anyone to see...