Tuesday, September 28, 2010

6 Social Media Mistakes That Can Get You Fired

I know lots of people blog about Facebook, but this topic was especially interesting to me. A year ago at the company I was interning with, we had a meeting where we discussed if we should check an applicant on Facebook before hiring them and monitoring our current employees. I am strongly opposed to the idea. I spoke my mind that Facebook is a "social" networking site, not a "what I do at work" site. Management still does not check Facebook or other social media sites at that company.

In the CIO article that I read, it lists 6 mistakes that people make on social networking sites that could get them fired or not hired to a job all together.
  1. Post negative comments about your job or your company
  2. Defending your employer in an online dispute
  3. Discussing private and/or security-related company matters
  4. Disguising your identity and  pretending to be someone else
  5. Offering up too much information about your personal life and recreational activities
  6. Posting questionable pictures 
All of these seem pretty self-explanatory to me but apparently most people don't get the "Facebook" talk all the time like us MBAs do, right? People need to get a little smarter about what they post on social networking sites. One example that the CIO article gave was when a female employee was actually friends with her boss and posted not so flattering comments about her boss. "The woman updated her status to read: OMG I HATE MY JOB!! My boss is a total pervvy (sic) w**ker, always making me do s**t stuff just to p**s me off!! W**ker!" The boss responded: "I guess you forgot about adding me on here? " and ended with "Don't bother coming in tomorrow. And yes, I'm serious."" Now that does not seem very smart! You should really remember that you're friends with your boss.

The article states that 7% of all organizations have fired someone for activity on social networking sites, while 20% of employers have disciplined employees for activities on social networking sites.

Okay... I want to hear your stories. Anyone have anything happen to them or a friend because of something they had posted on a social networking site?

Friday, September 24, 2010

Verizon iPhone? Not anytime soon

I have personally heard many Verizon users be hopeful that the rumors were true that they would soon be able to purchase the iPhone through Verizon. Verizon's CEO put an end to those rumors when he said, "It'll likely arrive one day, but not as soon as we'd like." Verizon is hoping the their LTE or Long Term Evolution network will sway Apple to come to Verizon. According to a recent study, more than half of Verizon subscribers will switch to the iPhone if given the chance. Now that is a lot of people! Also, it has been mentioned that many current iPhone users are tired of AT&Ts poor service and are disappointed that they will not be able to switch to Verizon anytime soon. It will be a bad day for AT&T when Verizon users finally get access to the iPhone. AT&T really does need to do something about their service or should we say lack there of. It is completely ridiculous that on a Saturday night at LSU you can't get a text out, and God forbid a call. They should start the change now so they won't lose all of their iPhone users who only put up with AT&T's service because of the iPhone.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Not another social networking site!

Onto my next blog...

So apparently from cio.com's Google Gets Serious About Social Networking, Google will be adding a "social layer" to it's suite. I mean really. Do we really need another social networking site? I already waste enough of my time on Facebook, I don't need another site to help me procrastinate. It is not yet known if Google will somehow form some kind of alliance with Facebook or develop an entire new site of its own.

Another fun thing that I learned while on this website, there was a link to a site that listed Ten of the Strangest Social Networking Site. And here they are...
  1.  stachepassions.com
  2. vampirefreaks.com 
  3. ziitrend.com
  4. eons.com
  5. lineforheaven.com
  6. matchadream.com
  7. intellectconnect.com
  8. divorce360.com
  9. redkaraoke.com
  10. ncludr.com
If you check out any of these, please check out #1. Absolutely the best out of this list.
Have fun and start creating your profiles if any of he above interest you.
Happy blogging!

    Monday, September 6, 2010

    Texting Gone Wrong

    Texting teens get the wrong number -- a REALLY wrong number

    I came upon this article because it was posted at the top of my TigerMail account. It is an article from CNN.com where two teenagers in Montana accidentally texted the Sheriff instead of their drug dealer when trying to buy marijuana. They miss-dialed the the phone number by one number. The sheriff turned over the case to a narcotics officer who set up to meet the two boys later that day. This will go on the kids records but they will not face any other consequences. They sheriff said that the parents will discipline the children.

    Now this is absolutely ridiculous! Shouldn't you make sure you have the right number before you try to text your drug dealer? This is a perfect example of how much technology has changed the world as we know it. I can only assume but you used to hear about people dealing drugs on the corner. I don't think I have actually ever seen that happen. I would then assume people moved towards calling a certain person on their cell phones. And now, people are now texting their drug dealers.

    This wasn't an assigned article but I thought it was super intersting and somewhat amusing. Hope someone else will too! Enjoy!

    Wednesday, September 1, 2010

    iPods and Halos

    The first article I read today was "iPod Touch Gains Retina Display, Dual Camera" from CIO.com. I'm not really sure why these additions to the iPod touch are huge breakthroughs since they are already a part of the iPhone 4. It should have been a given that the iPod touch was going to get these upgrades as well. It is pretty interesting that the iPod touch is outselling Nintendo and Sony in the portable gaming industry. I never really thought of the iPod touch as a gaming device. I just thought of it as a music playing device. So much for an iPod just playing music.

    Another article I read because the title caught my eye was "The Halo Effect of Microsoft's Halo" from businessweek.com. Since my undergrad degree was in management, I have studied the halo effect in multiple classes. I'm not sure the author actually stuck with the halo effect topic throughout the article though. By definition the halo effect is when one trait of a person/thing is influenced by the perception of another trait of the person/thing. Maybe the article is meaning that Halo the franchise is causing a halo effect of Microsoft in the gaming industry. Halo is Microsoft's only successful game at the time. I think it is really interesting that Halo is exclusively for the Xbox only. I'm not a big game but I thought that usually games are made for all of the gaming systems. I didn't realize until just now when I looked it up that Microsoft is the maker of the Xbox. It totally makes sense now that Halo is only made for the Xbox. Even though I don't have an Xbox and probably won't ever play Halo, I am interested to see if this game lives up to the rest of the Halo franchise.