There is a service you can now retain to help you with your anonymous social network stalking. The company, once contracted, will assume a cover identity; friend, follow, or otherwise connect with your desired target; and then publish a daily report regarding your mark and his or her Internet-enabled comings and goings.
Now, obviously this concept was first conceived, and quickly used, by a jilted adolescent lothario stalking his ex-girlfriend.
Friday, 1pm: Subject tweeted regarding her alleged kanoodling in cafeteria with varsity quarterback.
But business is a dog-eat-dog affair, and I imagine it took mere seconds for this service to transcend the realm of high school romance and get its MBA from Wharton.
I am personally acquainted with at least one executive (now former-executive) who somehow missed the memo stating that the Internet: a) can be seen by everyone; and b) never ever forgets. And this gentleman -- we’ll call him Larry -- singlehandedly eviscerated his career at a certain telecom giant via a careless and ill-advised bout of Facebooking after cocktails one evening.
Larry forgot the cardinal rule of social media: Just because you’re wearing a t-shirt and jeans, are three sheets to the wind, and hidden in the back of some dive bar while on business in Chicago, does not mean you can throw off the yoke of your three-piece pinstripe and loafers to embark on a tell-all, pictorial, autobiographical extravaganza via Facebook and expect to have a career in the morning.
I’ll say it again: The Internet never forgets. And no matter how you configure those all-but-useless privacy controls, someone will see you. And someone will be angry.
I consider social media to be a great and powerful tool. But as the face of Rain Computers, I understand all too well that a simple, innocent, alcohol-induced slip of the tongue could affect countless people in my organization, including staff, investors, partners, and even customers. Listen, I can party with the best of 'em. I just make sure that, if I'm going to lose a bit of self-control one evening, it’s lost in the presence of trusted friends -- friends who don’t let friends drink and tweet.
There is a price to pay for the ease with which we can, in this time of 24/7 publicity, become a household name overnight. And that price is one of ever-vigilant decorum.
So by all means, go out, have a few cocktails, sample the local culture. Just remember that posting pictures on Facebook of your debauchery might just have a deleterious effect on the meeting you have the next morning to discuss billions in distribution with Walmart. And act accordingly.
— Kevin Jacoby is CEO of Rain Computers, which specializes in high-performance solutions for audio and visual production.
I think not. The assault on privacy will not stop or slow; however, it will become diluted by the incredible quantity of data. We will be protected not by the re-introduction of privacy but by the fact that our foibles are not interesting enough to attract attention.
jwallace - your tweet pretty much sums up the point of the blog but from the individual vs. company perspective. I wonder why you'd regret not having a permalink. It might be better left unrepeated.
when I tweet drunk, the text is slurred. Iwas looking for a permalink so I didn't have to post my drunken tweet from September 2010 here but alas
PhillyD aka sxephil, you's a stoopid mofo. I said it and so are yhour followers. You and your strreamy nomination can kiss my"
the benefit in this lesson is it just dawned on me what a permalink could be used for.. seen it for years, had it in apps we developed but I truly did not understand its function/role.
Absolutely. In fact, I rarely even try to restrict social media content to a limited audience. I don't expect that to work effectively, and if it works now it will probably get broken in a future update.
And this is why I have a strong anti-app stance. I want to be the one determining what is posted on my behalf. I certainly don't want an app asking all my contacts to share their birthdays and pass the request on to all their contacts, as at least two different apps have tried recently. I almost always reject app requests, while allowing public access to my content.
"I just make sure that, if I'm going to lose a bit of self-control one evening, it's lost in the presence of trusted friends -- friends who don't let friends drink and tweet."
. . . or friends who don't tweet about your losing it. We all need to remember we're on 24/7. Whether it's directly connected online or a few degrees of separation from being connected, always remind yourself you can be anyone's next tweet or text . . . ready, camera, action!
"like Mitch, I basically assume everything I put on social media is public."
me too!!
even the postings in private fb groups (leaks..)
"In order to keep your right to be left alone, you have to give up your right to privacy, in order to keep your right for privacy, you have to give up your right to be left alone" - father of virtual reality (so I'm told)
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People called it "crackberry" because RIM invented the smartphone addiction. Then they messed up and all was lost. And now here they are again with their noses pressed up against the glass. Should you let them back in?
The sun is shining on a whole new way to get ahead. And every big company is looking for the keys to the castle. Turns out, the key is personnel. Are you the answer to their question?
The FBI is reading David Petraeus's email. Apple wants to help you find your phone, and your browser knows what kind of underwear you prefer. Welcome to the new paradigm of privacy: There isn't any.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
More companies are trolling social networks to find and vet potential job candidates. Beware the pitfalls of blurring the line between personal and professional lives.
A growing number of HR managers are suspicious of individuals who do not take part in social media and view them as anti-social in real life as well as online.
Michael Brutsch, a.k.a. Reddit's Violentacrez, is a creep who posted borderline kiddie porn to the Internet anonymously, and got fired when outed by a media outlet. It's a cautionary tale even for people who aren't jerks and predators.
Twitter's changes are clearly aimed at being more Facebook-like, and this is because both companies are vying to serve the mobile social network market. But can that market work for anybody, given how difficult it is to push ads to social-update readers?
As enterprises leap into the Web 2.0 world of blogging, commenting, and social networking, just 'being there' won't deliver ROI. You may want a 'Web Evangelist' to systematically harvest the feedback in order to polish your product or service.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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