Cleaning up your online profile...

A recent incident with my sister reminded me of the importance of closely managing your online profile.

I opened a Facebook account several months ago to familiarize myself with the service and learn how it might be helpful to our work here at The Reinvention Institute.  Since I wasn't ready to create an official TRI presence, I mostly limited my connections to family, personal friends, and the occasional 'friend-colleague' (these are people that I've met through work whom I've become personally friendly with).  Mindful of the fact that nothing posted online is ever truly private (even with Facebook's highest privacy settings), I've chosen to be very selective with the information I share on the site.

Imagine my surprise when I went got a notification that I'd been tagged in a bunch of photos!  My sister had posted some family pictures, including a number of candid shots from my bridal shower and wedding.  Now in my sister's defense, I actually had a few wedding pictures on my own Facebook profile (I knew that the longtime friends I was connecting with on the site would want to see them).  But what she didn't know is that they were carefully edited to include only those I'd be comfortable showing the remotest of strangers or potential business colleagues.

Luckily all it took was a quick email to my sister to get the pictures taken down.  But it was a lesson learned that you must always stay on top of the image your online profile presents.

Tips for managing your online profile include doing an online search on yourself, setting up a 'Google Alert' to send you a notification anytime your name is mentioned online, or taking an objective look at your LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace page.  For a more comprehensive sweep, download a great checklist from $100k+ job site, TheLadders.com.

Comments

[Jaya Schillinger]

I hear so many Facebook tales of woe. Getting tagged in photos can be a surprise (that happened to me after a halloween party) but the other common problem is when people change their relationship status and all their friends get the alert!

A couple things that have made FB better for me:

1. I made a decision to keep FB for a very small group of long-time friends only. (LinkedIn is more for business anyway.)

2. I wrote a short but sweet email template that I use to turn down friend requests from business friends and aquaintences.

3. I turned all my privacy settings up high. Everything is "friends only." (Nothing for friends of friends except part of my profile, and nothing visible to Google.)

4. There is a setting that is *supposed* to make it so that if someone tags you in a photo, it will only show that photo to mutual friends.

Here's a GREAT article on exactly how to set your privacy controls:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

Since I live such a transparent life online with blogging, Flickr, etc, I'm finding that i actually enjoy having ONE social network site exclusively for socializing!

[Joe Bologna]

I've had an action item to do this on my list for over 2 months. Part of the reason I didn't do it was because it seemed like such a big project. Thank you for writing this article, it will make getting this done much easier. I hope others post more tips like Jaya did.

[Pamela Mitchell]

Thanks Jaya for the great tips and link! Joe, maybe do 5 minutes every day instead of making it a big project.