Today, companies are fighting for our social media attention; with the new Google + and Facebook’s video chat feature, it’s become a fairly difficult prospect to try and decide how to keep up in the social media world. While all of these outlets provide a wide array of opportunities on the personal and business level, it’s often easy to forget what the negative implications of these tools can be.

This week, the New York Times presented an article on a new company that specializes in digging through the social media world to find implicating material on potential employees (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/technology/social-media-history-becomes-a-new-job-hurdle.html?WT.mc_id=TE-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M211-ROS-0711-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click). This means that employers are paying good money to see what people write in their Twitter, ‘Like’ on their Facebook page, and what pictures they’re posting to Picasa. Though it’s become easier and easier to do these things with our smart phones and tablets, the ease of exposing our lives is somewhat disturbing. The implications on a future relationship or job could be dictated on what opinions we express and what images are captured of us online.

Even in the realm of business, social media has become a tool to engage a base of clients, but can be a double-edged sword as well. I read news of so many actors, musicians and other public figures that have updated their Twitter offending fans or posted something inappropriate to their Facebook page. Roger Ebert, usually a well-respected writer, met with a high volume of controversy over his Twitter comments regarding the death of Ryan Dunn (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/21/roger-ebert-defends-ryan-dunn-twitter-comments). While most of these remarks are coming from individuals highly involved in the public sphere, businesses taking advantage of social media must beware of the consequences of what they say in these venues as well. Though social media is a free and easy way to connect with existing and potential customers, one wrong move could alienate an entire group of people.

In all, companies will and should take advantage of the positive effects of social media outlets, but must also tread carefully to ensure they are projecting a positive image that will only promote their business—not hurt it.

Tags: socialmedia, socialnetwork

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 9:38 am and is filed under Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.