Managing the Online Persona
We live in a culture of sharing, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook told Wired.com in 2009:
people choose to share all this information themselves…. people need to move through this process of realizing that sharing information is good, and slowly sharing more and more information over time. But by doing that you get a lot richer information…
We feel more connected when we share, and the sense of being in community can have positive effects.
It’s often said that the Internet is a global village. But anyone who’s lived in a village knows that a village has both its cranks and its heroes, its gossip and its town crier, its snoop and its police, its fool and its sage.
Which one will you be?
Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen says you should think twice before posting to the Internet. “Think about how [what you write in email, blogs, or discussion forums] will look to a hiring manager in ten years,” advised Nielsen in 2005.
What is the dividing line between sharing about your life and projecting a professional image that will help you get that job interview?
Nobody likes a person who shares too much, but nobody likes a big phony either.
Sources
. Jakob Nielsen, Weblog Usability: Top Ten Design Mistakes (see rule nine), Alertbox, Oct. 17, 2005.
. Fred Vogelstein, The Wired Interview: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, wired.com, June 29, 2009.
Related Postings
. Social Networking, Privacy, and the Law
. Tamar Weinberg: Social Media Etiquette Handbook
