Funnily enough I read two articles about Facebook yesterday; one about Goldman Sachs interest in the social networking site's potential and one about why it pays to be vigilant as to what you post on your personal Facebook page. There is probably some overlap in there somewhere.
The first was about Goldman Sachs USD 500 million investment into Facebook. This sees Facebook valued at somewhere in the vicinity of USD 50 billion. So, what is in the water up Cambridge way that allows Harvard drop-outs to head up multi-billion dollar behemoth tech companies? I wonder what this puts Mark Zuckerberg's personal stake in Facebook at in dollar terms? There was some talk of the company being forced to go public or at least run an Initial Public Offering with the Goldman Sachs investment. But, Zuckerberg seems pretty intent on not taking the public route at this point in time.
The second article was about how employers are getting applicants to log into their Facebook accounts as part of the interview process as a means of vetting whether the applicant is a suitable match for the prospective work environment. So, whatever happened to psychometric testing to find that synergy stuff out?
The article also noted how some employers were doing the hard research yards off their own bat and checking out prospective employees for themselves to find out whether there are the necessary values and ideals matches required to be successful. I am guessing that these vetting procedures would probably extend to blogs as well. I would reckon people are more likely to find "controversial" discussion on my blog rather than my Facebook or Twitter pages.
There is no doubt that the exponential growth of social networking capabilities and the technology to facilitate our interactions through social networking has meant that there is stuff going online every second that at some point, somewhere, and for some one is going to cause them some embarrassment or grief. Whether that grief be a broken relationship or a failed job application remains to be seen. However, as the photo here clearly shows, people post some really outrageous shots of themselves and others on their Facebook pages.
Perhaps the moral of this story, if there is one, is that one should think twice, maybe even three or four times, before posting those Friday or Saturday night party snaps on Facebook. Then again, maybe it is not only the pictures that are a problem. It is probably not a good idea to post on Facebook as a status update that you are not going into work today because your too drunk to get out of bed (or that you are in bed with the Boss' wife or girlfriend or whatever).
Ho hum...
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