Twitter Class

Monday Oct. 31, 2011 my business writing class did an experimental Twitter class.  Instead of showing up to the traditional classroom all students and the teacher logged into Twitter and held a discussion over an article by Forbs.com called "5 Reasons Why Your Online Presence Will Replace Your Resume in 10 years."  The article can be found by clicking on the following link: http://goo.gl/G9mZu The article’s 5 reasons: 1. Social networking use is skyrocketing while email is plummeting, 2. You can’t find jobs traditionally anymore, 3. People are managing their careers as entrepreneurs, 4. The traditional resume is now virtual and easy to build, and 5. Job seeker passion has become the deciding factor in employment.  These 5 points brought up much discussion in our Twitter class. 

One topic that kept coming up over the Forbs article was how much information you should be putting out on the web for people to look you up.  As helpful as it can be by putting yourself "online" for employers to find you many people were concerned with how easy it is for other people to find you as well, people you may not want to have your information.  Think about this, how comfortable are you with putting your name, address, phone number, email, and even your picture out there for all to view?  One student compared this to an online dating site saying, "This article is suggesting that we put ourselves on the matrket like a singles site."  Many of us have, or have had, facebook pages or myspace accounts that give us control over how much information we share, allowing us only to share what we are comfortable sharing.  However how do we control what everyone else is sharing about us?

With sales of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile internet capable devices growing, the access to the internet is endless.  And most of these devices have cameras and video capabilities on them as well.  This gives anyone with one of these devices access to share info on you.  Whether it be a picture or video of you, or a simple status update or tweet with your name tagged.  Anyone who thinks there is still such thing as privacy is living in the past.  You are "online" whether you like it or not.  The best we can do now is be proactive about it.  Put ourselves out there and be visible "online" as our self and not as how others perceive us or post about us.  Technology is growing and social media is only going to grow with it.