Facebook & Twitter

Although Twitter and blogs are both means by which people can discuss whatever their ideas, beliefs, or thoughts may be, I think that Twitter is much different than blogging. While blogs tend to be longer and discuss matters that are important to an individual, tweets seem to be just short thoughts that are whatever happens to be on someone's mind, important or not.

Twitter was much easier to set up than the other social media sites we've used in this course. I had no trouble figuring out how to create an account or how to Tweet. For privacy settings, I simply checked a box called "Tweet Privacy" so that I have to approve who can see what I write on Twitter. Although I don't feel like I've tweeted anything of importance, it's still nice to know that I am in control of who is reading my thoughts. I have yet to play around too much with my Twitter. I haven't really designed it in any special way or attempted to use "lists," "trends," or "replays." Hopefully in time I will become more familiar with these things.

As for Facebook, I already had one set up! Since I have been using Facebook for quite a while, I had no trouble with this part of the assignment. I thought that I would go ahead and make a Facebook group for my classmates, as Bistra suggested to explore in the week 3 powerpoint, since there wasn't much else I could do for this social media site in terms of classwork. As for privacy on Facebook, I'd like to think my page is fairly private. I do not allow those who aren't my friends to see my pictures or information. I also don't allow anybody to see my contact information. Under privacy policy, one of the first things that is stated is that Facebook is dubbed one of the most trusted in terms of Privacy. I believe that it has plenty of settings that allow for people to hide any information they wouldn't want to share. The thing I think that people have to worry about most would be sharing information with things like games or applications. Although there is a warning about what the site will be able to see, people aren't aware of how much information they are giving away.

While looking at my Facebook profile (pictures, status updates, wall posts, etc.), I realized just how unprofessional my page is. The first thing I noticed was that my default photo is a picture of me and my friend tailgating before a country concert (sorry, Mom.) As I moved on to statuses, I didn't find there to be any huge red flags. Most of them were either brief descriptions of what I was doing (for example, "heading to the beach!") or up beat song lyrics about summertime. However, it's not just what you say that employers would look at. I'm not thrilled with some of the language my friends choose to use on my page, or the implications that some of their comments have. In the end, changing my picture would probably be the most important thing to change before searching with a job. I strictly use my Facebook to keep in contact with friends and family, not employers, so the only thing that wouldn't be private would be my picture. Sipping from a koozie in a cowgirl outfit may not be the best first impression.

Overall, I think that Facebook, rather than Twitter, would be a great outlet for my field of research (non-profit organizations.) This is because they can get out more information to people all around the world through one of the most used social media sites. The organization that I was given for the Wiki class project (World Wildlife Fund) does have a Facebook page as well as a Twitter.