How Clean Is Your Online Life?

 

Admit it. Some of you have been a little sloppy online, especially at the beginning when you didn't really know what social networking was all about. If you didn't post that drunken, half-naked picture of yourself on your wall, your friend sure did. And, in this ever-growing and ever-changing community of social networking, reputations that you form in the digital world are invading more and more on your professional life.

Online services like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or blogs enable you to post an array of personal information. This information, then, becomes potentially available to anyone, including employers.

Now, you might ask yourself, "Why would an employer be interested in hiring me, look at my Twitter or Facebook page?"

Well, there are two main reasons.

1. Many employers may use these social networks to search for individuals with a certain level of education,  work experience, personal interests, and/or anything else that might be a asset to their company.

 2. Background checking. What better way to find out who you really are than to check out one of your many facebook albums?

Face it, employers want to find out all they can about who's working for their company. Fortunately and unfortunately, some of what you put out into cyberspace is publicly available. It's legal for your potential employer or current employer to take a peek, because on the Internet, you have a lower "expectation of privacy."

So, it's not an invasion of privacy for an employer to view pictures of your wild and crazy weekend on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or personal blog. It's not illegal for them to check your statues.

So, what's a good way to find out whether or not you have a blemish on your online life?

Take a look at what I saw on the news this morning.

Socioclean. They say that their mission is to simplify the problem for end-users by allowing them to scan and clean their online profile for various social networks. Socioclean is the first comprehensive solution for managing and monitoring your online social network profile.

Check it out!