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While I like the idea of blogs doing the work for us in finding jobs, I also worry that as the dialogue within the blogs become more widely accepted, the internet will begin to become bland. The extreme opinions and thoughts presented on blogs add color to the world and reminds me how different people can be. If people feel as though they cannot write their true thoughts on the internet, postings will become bland. If you are applying to a job within an IT department of a company, the employers should not care about a crazy weekend you had with your friends in college. What is the world without extreme points of view? If we truly watch what we say on our blogs in order not to hurt anyones feelings or disagree with a potential employer, then political debates wouldn't even be able to be posted. Yes, I know, maybe I am taking this to the extreme. However, if you think about it, a simple post about a political candidate could hurt you for getting a job if it disagrees with the potential employers thoughts on the subject. As we become more and more aware of what we are posting on the web the information will become bland.

American History textbooks are a great example of how being too careful can hurt. As people become more political about the textbooks, the publishers have to attempt to please everyone. The textbooks cannot make the United States look bad and cannot sway too much to the left or the right of the political spectrum. Everything inside textbooks must be 100% PC. Children are learning only parts of American History and not the full story. They are told what to think instead of having both sides presented and being allowed to make their own decision on the matter.


Just as textbooks are leaving out important info due to censoring, so will the internet if we try too hard to appease everyone. Having opinions and voicing them is not always a bad thing. If there could just be a way where people can present their ideas freely on the internet as well as use it for career and job purposes. For now, we have to post anonymous blogs without any trace of ourselves attached.



http://www.historytextbooks.org/senate.htm

Social News websites are definitely a great source of free advertising for small businesses. I just recently got a job working for a woman who owns an independent travel agency and operates it from her own home. Previously, the target market for the travel agency was jewish singles. Now, it is more simply for people who want to take an off beat adventurous international trip. I have realized through her agency how important social news sites are.


My job for the Steppin' Out Adventures Travel Agency is to keep up with event postings on all of the various social networks and social news sites. Some sites even have a calendar where anyone can post upcoming events. Through posting on all of the sites, we will be able to figure out what generates the most site hits and what sites are really worth the time. Attached to her home site is a tracker that will tell the administrator where they get the most people. The amazing thing to me is that she knows exactly what needs to be done, it is just the time that is needed. In order to keep up with all of the social news sites, a lot of time is needed. I am hired for 10-15 hours a week to just make sure that all of the sites are up to date and all the upcoming trips are advertised well.

I have already learned so much from the owner even though I have only had one meeting. She is really good at keeping up with contacts. Any e-mails she gets from travel companies, jewish groups, singles groups, or anyone who could be a potential market, she sends an e-mail back telling them about her upcoming trips. She keeps all the mass e-mails and keeps track of who she has told about what. She is always open to new markets and keeps all her contacts because she will never know when they might want to put a trip together with her.

There are just too many social news sites on the web that companies really have to do their research to figure out what is worth their time. The market is divided in to so many different segments that establishing a target market is very important if you do not want to waste your time. However, flexibility is also needed in case your original target market is slightly off.

I will make sure to keep you updated about all the new things I learn through my new internship! It should be really interested and perfect for this course!

The picture above is from http://www.steppinoutadventures.com/

TakingItGlobal

Ok so being the nerd I am, I just got really excited about one of the social networking sites that I am researching for Assignment 2. The site gave the html to advertise their purpose. I really think everyone should check it out. The website is TakingItGlobal and I'm really excited to continue learning more.

Computer to Computer

Just as networking is more useful on the internet because of the multiple extra contacts, the web has become a much more useful tool for brainstorming because of the extra information that might not be right on the tip of your tongue. When meeting in a group for brainstorming, you are restricted to the time available and the stresses of coming up with something in the time allotted, or at least coming up with a plan. When using the internet as a tool for brainstorming, you have more time and there is less pressure. You can browse through all sorts of random information that could possibly connect to your topic.


I know that whenever I am writing a paper, I like to start by gathering all random information in my head. Whichever connection sticks in my brain is the topic I usually chose because it means that it interested me most. I hate writing papers on topics that don't interest me fully because I am never confident with the outcome. I usually browse through random websites to find a way to approach a paper that will interest me. I may not be interested in the topic, but there is always a little part of it that I can find interesting and want to know more, it just takes time to look.


When working independently, people have the freedom to browse without the pressure of getting something done within the meeting time. When I have had group projects before, it has always been thoroughly frustrating to find meeting times because of everyone's busy lifestyles. We don't get to make our projects as good as possible because we have to decide on plans during class times or the 5 minutes afterwards. The pressure of meetings simply makes them less productive in my opinion.

Keep Connected

MySpace and Facebook were both originally meant to be a useful tool to keep people connected after they go off to college or move away. However, after it became more widespread, people started using it mainly to share pictures and simply say hi even though they might see each other every day. If people wouldn't abuse the purposes of Facebook through applications and "friending" everyone they know, it could still be a useful tool. However, teens seem to eat up the idea of the social network, so it is not going to change any time soon.


LinkedIn sounds like it is aimed at an older segment of the population rather than college kids. However, JobCorps is something similar but closer to home. JobCorps is a great way for AU students to find jobs in the area. I posted my resume on it and got many emails asking me to babysit. The greatest was when people contacted me. My resume did the work for me. I was contacted by Norah O'Donnell and Geoff Tracy. Mrs. O'Donnell is an anchor for NBC news and used to be the chief Washington correspondent for NBC and Geoff Tracy is the owner of Chef Geoffs and Lia's. I now babysit for their twins. Although it is only a baby sitting job, it's a great connection as well.



Connections can never be underestimated. Last semester, I had to take a cab back from the Dulles Airport and happened to share a cab with a woman who was a DG in college. She paid for almost the entire seventy dollar cab ride and gave me her card and told me to call if I ever needed anything. Also, the other weekend I was in the DFW Airport and I met a man who ended up being in charge of the IT department of his company. After talking to him about his job while waiting for our flight, he gave me his business card and told me to call him when I graduate and he would give me a job.



As long as social networks are not abused, they can be very useful. Too many connections are too hard to keep track of while too few connections do not help you in finding jobs. If you learn how to use networks correctly, they can help enormously. A network that I think would gain a lot of business is one that is somewhere in between LinkedIn and JobCorps. A network designed for undergraduate and graduate students for internship would be very beneficial. We wouldn't have to go through the Career Center and all their confusing steps to get an internship only in the DC area. It would be a unified way to find internships all over the country. If there is already one out there I would love to find out about it.

Is this OK for your mom to read?

Googling your name is always something fun to do, but have you ever really thought about how you appear to other people?  I just googled my name and found a Xanga site that I completely forgot about, and not to mention had a link to a webshots pages I had also forgotten I had ever created, a volleyball player at Catholic University named Katie Acuff, a web site that I had created for a class when I was in 6th grade, and some other random irrelevant links.  

The site that I had made when I was in 6th grade is called "The Mystery of History" and is an unfinished.  I highly doubt that this page would ever be usable information for potential employers.  However, the Xanga site is a little bit more incriminating.  After reading through some of the posts, I realized that I had written this when I was a sophomore in high school.  It's very embarrassing to read some of the things I posted.  There was one entry where I talked about how I was always getting grounded, how my mom thought that I was a pathological liar, I used to sneak out of the house and more...not something that I want my potential employees to think.  I don't know how seriously companies would take a Xanga site from sophomore in high school but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of them turning it against me.  If companies will use a Facebook picture from 10 years ago against a potential employee, why not use my Xanga site?  Although I have not touched my Xanga site in years, it still comes up on Google before my IT blog, which I have been updating at least once a week. 

It seems to have become a necessity for presidential candidates to make a list of everything that they have ever done and admit to them before incriminating evidence is found and brought up in a press conference.  Any information that can be found will be used against them if possible.  If Barack Obama can be a potential president of the United States after admitting to the use of cocaine, businesses should be able to look past a ten year old scandalous picture from Facebook.  

However, we cannot assume that information published online will not be used against us even if it is old.  It is clearly happening either way.  Hiring someone to review everything online that can be accessed by the public is definitely not a bad way to go.  Reputation Defender seems like a good choice for anyone interviewing for a job.  It is not a bad idea for anyone in any organization to make sure that everything published on the internet about themselves is something that they don't mind being seen by their mothers and grandmothers, usually a good rule of thumb.

Addicted to the internet

Creating a cybertwin sounds slightly ridiculous to me.  However, I also have not entered the world of online dating and am not too enthralled with the social phenomenon of my generation, Facebook and MySpace.  I'm not going to lie, I do visit Facebook every few days but I definitely do not rely on it.  My friends will leave me messages and I might  not get to writing on their wall for almost a week...if ever.

The idea of creating a twin in the internet world does not surprise me or excite me.  It is an interesting idea but it is nothing that I would ever do.  Why create a personality online so that you can be there one hundred percent of the time  This is where the world is becoming too addicted to the computer and uses it a san escape from being a normal social human being.  As I posted in an earlier entry, I do not think that the internet is causing people to have less useful knowledge than earlier years, but i do think that if people really create cyber twins, it is a complete possibility.

Creating a cuber twin would mean that every time you come back to the computer you have to review the conversations that occurred while you were gone.  The computer could misrepresent yourself and there would be no way to undo it.  I am very skeptical of this new idea.  I feel like people would begin to not worry enough about how they present themselves in their day to day life and begin to spend even more of their lives staring at a computer screen.  Would people know if they were talking to a twin and not a real person?  Would there be extra safety precautions to prevent sexual predators from creating a cyber twin?

Also, there are more than five personalities that a person could have.  The new program only "lets people pick one of five basic personalities, such as "warm-hearted, intellectual" or "cheeky, down to earth,"and then have that choice act as a proxy to friends or strangers."  This program has not been developed enough and through through.  There is a potential for success but with the internet crazed crazies in the world but there is also a large potential for unsafe operations.

The description of the article about Cybertwins is, "If spending too much time online turns you into your evil twin, then it might be time for a "cybertwin.""  This subheading is a false thought in my opinion.  The idea of the cybertwin only allows the people who have to go to work on a day to day basis to be online every hour of every day.  This will turn people into being obsessive about the internet, every day only looking forward to getting home to read the conversations that went on while they were at work.   This program would cause people to become even more addicted to the internet than they already are.