Can Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace Ruin Your Personality?

So, you created an account and have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, RentersQ, hi5, Bebo, Laatie, YouTube, Welate, MySpace, LinkedIn or wherever else online, and now what happens?

What is that you generally post on your profile? What kind of stuff do you post for your status update? What kind of groups and fan pages do you select to join? How do you behave online and what else do you do on any of these sites, the social media that you wouldn’t want people to know about you offline?

One thing for sure, and this is for everyone, everywhere, is that you should learn and know how to use social media to advance your career and make your life better; learn how to create and promote yourself by knowing what to, and not post on your profile, so you can one day get your dream job, or get into the college that you’ve always wanted.

In 5 – 10 years, it’s predicted that paper resumes and CVs will be a thing of the past; your online profile will become your real life resume when you apply for any job or to any college. So, remember that anything you post online, whether it’s your status update or those pictures from last night’s clubbing or pool party, the kind of pictures you wouldn’t want your parents, wife, husband, or kids to see, are automatically indexed and archived for search by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Be aware that your next employer and or college admission officer will certainly research you online; and your status updates data, including your posted photos maybe the things that may prevent you from getting whatever it is that you want.

When you go out, there are always those who randomly snap pictures with their camera phones and the next day you log onto your Facebook account, someone has tagged you in a photo, in which you appear in a compromising position, which you had no idea was being taken. So, be accountable for your social behavior online as you do offline.

Just because you hit the delete key on your keyboard doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve actually deleted your previously posted status updates or photos. They are never deleted permanently. Once you post them online, they are instantly streamed over the Internet and Internet search engines automatically index them for future search by anyone, anywhere.

So, be smart, stay informed. Completely fill out your online profile on any social networking site with your employment history as you would do in your resume, just the employer name, your job title, and a brief summary of your job responsibilities. This information will be crucial when you apply for a new job anywhere, because your next employer will likely do a search on you and that would help him or her make a fast informed decision in hiring you.

Use the social media for fun, but at the same time, use it to help advance yourself, your career, and your life; so that you may get what you want one day.

Life is all about competition, and everyone is out for him or herself. Make the social media to best work for you, so you can compete effectively and eventually win.

The Latest Updates, and the Accompanying Juicy News n’ Stuff

I haven’t updated this blog in a long time. I have been busy with my classes and new projects. A lot of things have happened since I last wrote on here.

1. History in the making – History has been made; Barack Obama is the Democratic presidential nominee, the first African American in the history of the United States to be nominated as the presidential candidate for a major political party, and the first African American to be elected, yes, elected President of the United States.
   
2. Musharraf – In November 2007, I wrote about Pakistani’s General (ret) PervezMusharraf falling out of favor with Bush, and well, that has certainly come to past. He’s now probably eating crackers and nuts, waiting to see if he might be court martialed.
   
3. China Olympics – China showcased its mighty with the super Olympics opening and closing ceremonies. China has been a closed society; most of us never really know what’s happening inside of China. Although its economy has been sky ballooning, since China recovered from its feudal economic system disaster in the 15^th or 16^th century, to become a communist economic system, it has always been a closed society. But the Beijing Olympic Games have shown the world what China has become, a mixture of powerful capitalist and socialist economy system, the next world economic power.
   
4. NBC Olympics – NBC’s broadcasting of the Olympics games was a disaster, because of its biased broadcasting focus. In the U.S., we barely saw other countries’ athletic performance. NBC simply focused on showing games where American athletes were the dominants, and if not, we never got to see those games. About 12 years ago, NBC paid gazillions to the International Olympics Committee for the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics games, and that simply is a sick and cruel monopoly, because, we don’t have any other option in the US to watch the Olympics game, except on NBC. And, even though we might want to watch other Olympics sports, we are forced to simply watch whatever NBC decides to show. The FCC needs to seriously look into this practice.
   
5. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps – Congratulations to Usain Bolt of Jamaica for being the fastest man on planet earth, and to Michael Phelps for being the fastest creature of the sea. As I watched Bolt running, I could feel that he wasn’t really running to his fullest, and if he did, he could have set a high level of world records which would been hard for anyone to break them. I wonder what sprinter Frankie Frederick of Namibia was thinking about when he was watching Bolt breaking three world records. Also, looking at Michael Johnson in the BBC broadcasting booth, when Bolt broke his record, Michael simply turned around in disappointment.
   
6. The Olympics Economic Disparity – The Olympic Games were not really designed to showcase equal and just competitiveness among the world’s athletes. They are actually stupid, because you have athletes from developed countries, whose full-time career is playing whatever their fields of sports and you have athletes from developing and underdeveloped nations who barely can financially afford to live as their counterparts from developed countries.

   How can American Basketball team competitively play against an Angolan basketball team? All of the American basketball team players are multi-millionaires who chose in what house to live, what to eat and what to drive each day. Whereas perhaps some of the Angolan basketball team may not even play basketball as their full-time career and may have to worry about affording the cost of their living, not even think of what to eat for dinner. May be Angolan basketball team players are well paid and thus well off, but compare to many of the participating countries’ GNP and GDP per capita, it’s ridiculous to call the Olympic Games equally competitive. This can be seen by the countries that win most of the medals. These are the countries that equally able and capable of economically taking good care of their athletes.  This economic disparity among athletes nearly if not completely, makes the Olympics games unequally competitive among the participating athletes. They may as well call them The G8 Olympics.
   

7. Zimbabwe Inflation – What else has been happening? Oh, Zimbabwe is fighting with inner self, getting that inflation rate under control would be something. Last time I checked, about eight months ago, its inflation was at 2.2 million%, wow. But the good thing is that everyone in Zimbabwe might be a millionaire, except when deciding what to buy with the millions might be a factor. You might take your one million and be on your way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, but by the time you get to the store, the price of the loaf of bread has doubled, so you have to run back home and get more millions, and again by the time to get to the store, the price has gone up again, so the process keeps repeating itself. So, is Zimbabwe the latest country to experience a hyperinflation?
   
8. Oprah Winfrey – If I ever see Oprah Winfrey, I’ll pat her on the back; she must be the happiest person on planet earth right now. Oprah is the real deal. Whatever she touches turns to gold. Nearly two years ago, Oprah appeared to her audience and to most TV viewers, urging Obama to run for the US presidency, even when Obama didn’t announce that he was interested in exploring the chore. And, there were many people who were lobbying to have Oprah run for the Office, but she said that she was not interested and that she wanted Obama to run. As the time went on, when Obama and Hillary got into their scuffle of the primaries, Oprah found her show running behind such shows as The Ellen DeGeneres Show, as most of her viewers were divided between Obama and Hillary. But, the golden girl has proven otherwise. She’s gold.
   
9. Logo Designing – those who constantly email me asking me about logo design, please visit www.marshgraphicdesigns.com and ask for Lindsay. She’s the best, the god of logo design, in the business.

Well, that’s it for now folks, I gotta go…!

The World’s Best Underrated Web sites

1. Photobucket (www.photobucket.com), the world’s biggest photo Web site, the easiest and most reliable way for people to create, manage and share their personal media online.

2. CNN.com (www.cnn.com), the world’s best and leader in online news and information delivery.

3. CNET.com (www.cnet.com), the world’s largest and the original web publisher of computer and technology news and information.

4. USA.gov (www.usa.gov), the world’s largest government web site.

5. DontDateHimGirl.com (http://www.dontdatehimgirl.com/), the world’s powerful and largest online community activist for women from around the world.

6. RentersQ (http://www.rentersq.com/), the world’s first online rental verification platform, the most complex web based rental predictive intelligence application ever developed using critical algorithmic expressions, for all the landlords and tenants around the world.

Which other world’s best underrated Web sites can you think of?