Needle, Meet Haystack

I really, really, REALLY effing miss screen names.

I miss screen names like the RIAA would miss suing people who download a tracked copy of the Bee Gees greatest hits collection.  I miss screen names like Rice Krispies Treats Cereal, the greatest thing to ever pass from bowl to spoon.  I miss screen names like honors students miss Wikipedia when there’s a big research paper due tomorrow morning and the Internet is down.

I miss screen names, and it’s all your fault.

Back when the Internet was just becoming widely available and nodbody knew quite what to do with it besides fart around on different Geocities pages and figure out the difference between a “www name” and an AOL keyword, every one of us used a screen name as a barrier to protect ourselves from the hidden dangers of the Information Superhighway.  The only people who shared their real names were celebrities, CEOs, politicians and crazy perverts who were trying to trick you into giving them your checking account information.

There was no Bob, Susan, Joan or Steve; there was SportsFan1987, Flirty_Girl_006, KnittingInWoolyArmor and FordTrucksSuxX837103124.  We defined ourselves by our passions and interests, the identities that we wanted to have.  A screen name was a big fuzzy blanket you wrapped yourself in to keep out the cold winds of the chat rooms and forums.

The anonymity and the name barrier gave us confidence to speak as we might not to the outside world; they let us be true to the thoughts we’d never given voice to.  Your pleasant neighbor who collected your mail during a weekend trip to Albuquerque might also be the guy cursing out Cubs fans until 3 in the morning.  The barista at your local coffee shop might trade dominatrix photos on her lunch break.  People kept their lives compartmentalized between the Real World and the Digital World.

And then, someone thought that it would be a good idea for all that to stop.

One could say that social networks that encourage Real Name usage, enhanced by automatic logins on other pages.  Some might instead look to those who decided that an “appropriate email address” contains a person’s name.  It could even be attributed to a general growth and comfort that the average person has with their computer and the exchange of information; we want to be open and to share with the world, so it’s natural that we go in, openly and honestly, as ourselves.  But whatever (or whomever) the source, one thing is clear: by removing the walls of privacy that come with a screen name, Internet Society made a conscious decision to permeate the day-to-day structure of our offline lives.

Instead of hiding our opinions behind a fake name and goofy picture, we confront people head-on as ourselves.  Our missteps and mishaps can be recorded for posterity, living forever in the non-tangible world online.  Of course, this is still speculation.  Even Google co-founder Eric Schmidt isn’t sure what’s going to happen:

“‘I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,’ [Schmidt] says. He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.” -Google and the Search for the Future, the Wall Street Journal

We’ve gone from being encased in armor to standing around as naked as the day that we were born.  We no longer have Online and Offline Names; they are one and the same.

Sure, there are still forums and locations for anonymity.  Online gaming is a popular choice for escapism, but gaming with friends often leads to people being called by their given names.  Dating sites let you pick a screen name like in the old days, but many members will instead choose to use their name in its place, or might just introduce themselves by name with their profiles.  If you want, you can make up a new identity for yourself  and lie online; it’s hardly a misdemeanor or socially frowned-upon activity.  However, the ease of communication and openness, coupled with the fearlessness among the denizens of the web makes using a false name in most circumstances seem unappealing and deceptive.

The early days of life on the Internet were about discovery.  The modern days of life on the Internet are about openness.  Which is a good thing, but only in theory.

When a person brings together two different parts of their life, like work and friends, for example, their personality becomes an odd mish-mash of the separate elements that they display in either scenario.  One rarely interacts with co-workers in the same way that they would interact with friends.  In these scenarios, people seem almost alien to members of both groups, showing characteristics that neither audience finds comfortable or recognizable.  Finding that balance is neigh-impossible because there really isn’t one – we don’t act the same around all people, and rarely find ourselves in situations where we need to do so.  But the blending of an Internet Self with a Real World Self creates this exact instance, but to a degree and scale where it is necessary to be the same all the time.  There’s even a lucrative field dedicated to navigating this new social curse: personal branding.

So you’re pulling together two parts of your life that you hoped would never meet, like your significant other and photos your parents have of you in the tub when you were three, and you have to make a lot of quick decisions about how you will present yourself.  Will you go full-bore, being honest and outspoken without the safety of a screen name to protect you, or will you keep your mouth closed to preserve your current reputation?

We are all living in the old adage about people in glass houses; the question is if we want to keep the glass smudge- and scratch-free, or if we’re willing to knock down a wall so we can explore the rest of the world.  It’s a choice with no clear victor for either option, and it’s one that millions of us struggle with every day.

I really miss screen names.  There were no hard decisions then, because I could be who I wanted to be without reality intruding on my little slice of Shangri-La.  I wasn’t even aware that I was in a glass house, and the only thing I was concerned about was exploring and comfortably expressing myself.  These days, I don’t have that option.  Anonymity on the Internet just isn’t the same.

You may have seen those cheesy commercials for Match.com or eHarmony or some other online dating site bragging about how many relationships they start online.  And I thought it was a bunch of crap.  Until I found out that it’s actually true (articles here and here) and impacts friendships as well.  But why does this work?  Because of one simple fact, best summed up by the late, great George Carlin:

Sometimes, a little brain damage can help.

We’ve all got fears, insecurities, skeletons in our closets, baggage, issues, problems, worries, oddly-shaped moles, and several metric tons of crazy and history, all pent-up and waiting to be released upon the unsuspecting masses, sometimes in the form of friends, family, pets, or significant others.  We don’t want to put it all out there at first, because we fear being rejected for being our “true selves.”  So we keep things inside, not telling those closest to us about how we actually sorta-kinda like watching Spongebob Squarepants reruns, or how we may have once faked a sprained wrist to avoid revealing that we’d hugged a cactus.*

So we’ve got all this brain damage that makes us beautiful, unique, possibly helmet-worthy snowflakes, and we crave a way to get it out there.  In the past, this was apparently done by smoking heavily, drinking a lot, and having affairs.  But now, we have the Internet.

We share everything now: vacation pictures, stories, opinions, links to stupid cat pictures, random musings, advice…we share.  And in doing so, we reveal more about ourselves than we might in person.  Instead of seeing someone across a crowded room, making small talk, and then, over the course of several days, weeks, months, or years getting to know them, we just jump right in.  We get to know personalities before we get to know people.

There are some who share all their dirty laundry, from sex to literal dirty laundry, but who keep things like their jobs or their favorite colors private.  There are others who put together little vignettes and offer anecdotes without giving much of a comprehensive picture.  But we become interested in them because of who they are on that deep level that movies, TV and cliché-ridden books tell us we’re searching for.  With only a few minutes of reading, we gain deeper insight into the lives of others than some used to do in a lifetime.

Part of the explanation for why this works can be found in the fractured cliques of the World Wide Web.  People can gravitate towards niche communities – everything from general categories like sports and entertainment to the oddly specific, like the 1983 Denver Broncos or Timothy Dalton-era James Bond fan-fiction.  Whether they’re active or passive members of these communities, they get to know others from the inside out, forming deep social connections on a level that loudly proclaiming, “The Chiefs should never have won that season closer against Elway, and James should have gotten with Lupe, too!” in public would never achieve.

Getting to know others within these communities is easier, too.  There’s already an air of familiarity to the whole situation, and all involved have something very deep and personal in common.  In some ways, friendships created online can be stronger than those made in real life.  So shouldn’t we apply those concepts to our everyday, non-Internet lives?

While radical honesty wouldn’t be the best policy here, it wouldn’t hurt to be more open to others about your likes and dislikes.  Get involved with groups that share your hobbies.  Don’t be afraid to let your freak flag fly!  Being open and honest about what you like and enjoy is the best way to connect with others, and there’s no reason to feel weird about it.  After all, everyone’s got a little brain damage.  And believe it or not, that can actually help.

*THIS IS NOT A ROYAL ‘WE’ – I DID NEITHER OF THESE.

Do you remember when you first got the Internet in your home?  If you were like millions of Americans, you had snagged one of the quintillions of AOL discs*, installed the software, connected your computer to your phone line, and jacked in to the Information Superhighway.  Well, after several minutes of the most horrific screeches ever belched forth from a 56k/v90 fax modem.

You would be logged in to see a plethora of options, from news and chat rooms to email and Instant Messaging to weather reports, sports scores, and searches.  Oh, the searches.  The Internet was a new place, and as you would venture forth for your first sojourn into the World Wide Web, you might use Altavista, Yahoo!, AOL keywords, or even that newfangled Google thing.  All this information to explore with the click of a mouse or the tap of a keyboard!  It was truly a marvel of modern technology.

But what happens now?  You turn on your laptop, it grabs a wireless connection, and you’re online as soon as your OS has booted up.  You might head over to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or some similar social contact site, then head to a news site, tech blog, webcomic or whatever.  If you need to look something up, you can always hit up Wikipedia or Google.  And that’s pretty much it.

And while that might not seem like a big difference, here’s the thing: it’s a huge difference, and a big part of the evolution of the Internet.

The online world used to be search-based; you would look up whatever you needed, testing the boundaries of what was available online.  It was still a static medium in that there was less user interactivity.  You would usually only have a web page if you were a developer, or (later on) if you created a Geocities page.

But as the Internet grew, and people figured out its possibilities and boundaries, it became much more dynamic.  Social networking brought with it an ease of personalized webpage creation.  New resources for sharing like YouTube, IMDB and Wikipedia made finding large quantities of information in one spot easier than ever before.  Social interactions have been forever changed.  The dynamic evolution created a shift, though: the Internet became destination-based.

Rather than consistently exploring, people now have a set group of websites that they visit, a group only expanded through referrals or links by trusted sites that are already used, or by friends.  Even as the scope of information has grown, the scope of attention has narrowed to the degree of selective ignorance.  We move around in niche packs, with fewer and fewer people expanding their views outward.

One of the largest destination sites is Facebook, which has tens of millions of users.  In fact, almost everyone I know is on the site.  Lately, there have been many criticisms of the site’s new privacy policies, causing a large uproar in the online community.  However, most people say that they won’t leave Facebook, as all of their friends are already on the site.  In essence, it’s an Internet-based catch-22.  You want to leave the site, but all your friends are on it, and they don’t want to leave because all of their friends are on it, and so on and so on.  As long as there are no alternatives, people will stay.

This problem presents a number of issues, the biggest of which is not privacy at all: should everyone on the Internet all be using the same website to connect to each other?  After all, we make thousands of connections in our lifetimes, and it might be prudent to have one place to find people to stay in touch with them.  The solution of niche social networks would require some users to become members of dozens, or even hundreds of sites to keep up with their social and professional contacts (not to mention that the main social network building site recently announced that it will be switching to a pay model), which would get too confusing and convoluted.  But when the utility of a site (connecting to everyone) is compromised by privacy issues, where do people go?

The way I see it, there are three choices:

1. Regression: You can always go back to the older methods of communication: email, IM, phones, evites, in-person meetings, maybe even (gasp!) write a letter.  All of these are still solid forms of communication, and chances are that they won’t be passing your info along to marketers.
2. Lateral transition: Twitter is pretty up-front about its stance on privacy, MySpace is still around, and there’s been a video floating about on the net about how good ol’ AOL can make a comeback.  Facebook isn’t the only game in town, after all.
3. Search: Remember what I said earlier about the old pioneer spirit of adventure in the early dial-up days?  Go out and find new communities and services – there might be something better just waiting to be discovered.

The Internet is a wonderful, expansive, open world of communities, communication, and information.  So go out an play once in a while.

*I’m not gonna lie, you guys.  My parents had dial-up AOL service up until last year.  But don’t worry, they got better.

How many of you use Craigslist?  Hold on a second – I’m not talking about the, ‘Oh, I’m looking for an apartment’ Craigslist.  I’m talking about ‘Gimme a h*** j** and I’ll give you a coffee table.’  Like that kind of Craigslist.  THAT’s Crisglist.  -Aziz Ansari

Oh my gosh you guys, Craigslist is the most amazing thing ever.  If you’re talking about the pinnacle of human achievement, the alpha and omega of culture and society as a whole, than you’ve GOTTA be talking about the ol’ CL (as the kids say).

I’ve bought a stereo on Craigslist.  I’ve sold furniture on Craigslist.  And when I’m feeling down, I turn to Craigslist fur the pure, unbridled joy that can only come from the schadenfreude found on the Personals page.

The best thing about the personals page on Craigslist is that unlike the classifieds pages of days gone by that Craigslist itself is modeled after, they permit longer messages.  This allows people to elaborate about themselves more, include pictures, misspell more words, create unintentionally funny messages and, perhaps most tellingly, shows an interesting phenomena in gender relations.

I call it the Assumption of Predisposed Intent.

Men write what they imagine a woman wants to hear, but from the perspective of a man.  Women do the inverse.  And the result is that most everyone sounds silly, creepy or desperate.  Because instead, the men and women should be writing as themselves.  This ties in with the lack of physical contact, which also explains some of the problems that can arise in online dating profiles.  But this is really a problem with the male and female brains.

For years, we’ve heard the cliches that all seem to boil down to the conceit that “men are stupid and women are crazy,” but that’s really overstating it on both sides.  They just have different opinions about what love and a relationship should be.  So what should happen is that the men should think like women, and the women should think like men.  So the guys need to change their writing to show more personality and less sex talk (preferably without shots of their junk), while the women need to be a bit more succinct in their word choice (and not write twenty paragraph essays on the guy they want to be with).  We need to re-wire our own brains in order to really connect with others on their own levels.  But this problem goes beyond singles posting on CL.

Whether it’s a job application, a memo, a presentation or even a conversation with a new friend, people don’t give enough consideration to their audience.  Sometimes, we say things that make others uncomfortable without knowing it, or are oblivious to nonverbal cues from others that could help us understand them better.  Whenever we talk or write to others, we have a tendency to choose our words and craft our sentences in a way that is pleasing to ourselves, not the audience.

So take the time to consider who you’ll be talking to.  Focus on them.  And then, if you’re really feeling up to it, send that post to “Missed Connections” so we can all see it.  Or sell your couch.  You know, whichever one you’re on the site for in the first place.

Information should be free, right?  We should be able to have access to all sorts of accumulated human knowledge because it benefits us as a society to have more educated people.  It’s a pretty solid concept, but there’s one problem: defining information.

The Great Napster Lawsuit of 2000 and the more recent Pirate Bay Keelhauling of 2009 only scratched the surface of the true issue that has been boiling under the surface of modern culture for almost 100 years:  is entertainment information, and if so, is it exempt from the rules of other information?

It wasn’t always this complicated; musicians and other artists were commissioned by the gentry to paint, write plays, create music, sculpt, tell stories and so on, most often about the employers themselves.  Much of it was work-for-hire, with the final result becoming the property of the paying party.  Occasionally, popular songs would be played by musicians at social gatherings, but there was no talk of royalties, percentage ownership, commissions or digital sales revenue.

But when the ability to record (and better preserve) entertainment was finally an option, something happened: celebrities.

Now, people all over the world could hear the same version of the same song, see the same movie and read the same book.  Shared experiences began sprouting in earnest, and trading cultural information became easier.  And those who provided the information (and entertainment) found themselves receiving more money and recognition than their forebears had ever dreamed.

But in order to properly recognize individuals’ contributions, laws and organizations were established to govern the flow (both cash and hard goods) of entertainment.  Similarly, when the Internet came into widespread use, new legislation and oversight had to be created to manage the information that people could find online.  Which is the can of worms that we’re now looking at.

Both Google and Wikipedia provide an unbelievably large store of cumulative knowledge, but consider this: most of the information contained on these sites used to be found in books, many of which required purchase.  Alternately, TV shows are now being sold on DVD, despite originating as a free (minus potential cable subscriptions) piece of entertainment.  So will the Internet (which already has service costs) develop anti-net neutrality practices and wind up more payment-based than it currently is?

Look at the blog model.  Most bloggers offer access to their sites (and the information contained within) for free.  Visitors can pop over to learn about any number of things from any number of websites.  The information is free and accessible.  But who pays for it?  Someone had to study and experiment in order to discover information on, say, body language, which cost time and money.  However, they do not have exclusive rights to the data – anyone can read and use (or even teach) it.  And with book reading on the decline, those who create new data and information streams can no longer rely on publishing to repay their costs.

We’re already starting to see the effect that free information is having on more traditional business models: eBook prices will rise, digital music downloads will cost more, and companies will restrict people from watching basic broadcast TV for free online.  This sort of makes sense – entertainment is a very profitable (and economically invaluable) industry.  But it seems that the cost of allowing entertainment (and information itself) to be cheap or free to consumers is getting too costly.

So enjoy access to the world wide web and all of the wonderful content that it holds.  While you can.

The iPad has been in the news a lot lately.  Even if you’re not going to buy one (there are some good excuses here), you’ve probably still heard and seen a lot about it.  And one of the phrases that a lot of bloggers and news media bonafides are throwing around a lot with regards to the device is that it’s an example of “the future of mobile computing.”

Really?

Now, granted, I enjoy getting wireless Internet as much as the next person.  And it would be nice to not have to squint at the screen of my iTouch whenever I play Bejeweled, but the mobile Internet experience has the potential to be horrifying.

Where we are now

I’m pretty outspoken when it comes to the problems and misuse of technology (see examples one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, etc.), but the real terror comes from the cultural shift that will occur once it becomes socially acceptable to have Internet everywhere.

It’s great to be able to pull up Google Maps when one is lost, or to use Yelp when you’re in a new city looking for an awesome place to eat.  It’s cool that you can get Internet on a smartphone to do business from almost anywhere, and the communication and information options are endless.  Unfortunately, this is probably the opposite of what will really happen.

The next time you’re out in a public place, notice how many people are on their cell phones or texting.  Whether it’s at a restaurant, movie theater, bookstore, antiques shop or even a funeral, the addiction to technology is so powerful that we can’t bear to be away from all communication for more than an instant.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks are supposed to help us expand our communities and improve relationships.  But what if they’re doing the opposite?

The social hermit

Have you heard of Dunbar’s Number?  It’s a theoretical proposition that states that one cannot maintain close, stable relationships with more than 150 people.  Now look at your Facebook friends list.  How many of them are you communicating with, and how many of them are you just collecting?

By giving more accessibility to existing social networks, a fully accessible Internet will limit our options for future interactions with people.  Instead of branching out to discover new friends, we will instead become so engrossed and distracted by our existing connections that we will only add to our social circles (and rarely subtract from them) when we are forced to interact with others, like at work.

The technology will allow us to be in a sea of people we don’t know, focused on a select few that we do.  We’ll become social hermits.  After all, it’s safe and comforting to have the same people to interact with – there’s less surprises, less drama and fewer chances to be disappointed or get emotional.

The cure

As popular as the Internet is, there should be limits.  While I’m a strong proponent of net neutrality, the idea that there should somehow be restrictions to the Internet is a good one.  Not in terms of content, but in terms of time and connectivity.

We spend enough time online as is.  At last check, the estimate is that the average American spends 13 hours a week online (this was not an observational study, so I don’t quite believe it).  Factor in the use of computers in non-Internet activities, cell phone use and so on, and that number jumps significantly.  And if we can get Internet everywhere, there’s every reason for that number to go higher.

In France, movie theaters have used cell phone signal jammers for years.  Why not apply the same principle to mobile Internet?  Schools (k-12), restaurants and other public locations could have mobile Internet signal jammers.  In this way, the prevalence of online use is somewhat diminished, and personal interactions are encouraged.

Even if the Internet becomes available everywhere, it doesn’t mean that it should be used at all times.  So the next time you find yourself texting during dinner, put your phone away and enjoy the company of the people you’re with.  And remember that things could be much worse.

Apparently, the Internet wants me to become more social.

Facebook has, for the past few months, been pointing out people who I haven’t written on the wall of, messaged, chatted with and so on.  ”Share news,” the website suggests.  ”Send them a message!”

And in some cases, Facebook is replacing ads with friend suggestions.  ”You both are fans of marmalade!”  it might say.  ”Add him as a friend!”

Really, Facebook, I’m okay.

I’ve discussed before my aversion to adding people for the sake of having a larger number of friends, but this is getting ridiculous.  There’s no utility in connecting with people who I don’t remember, or may never have met – it just seems creepy and wrong.  Also, it violates the new social contract.

I’ve always been under the assumption that social networking sites were created to enhance pre-existing friendships and interactions.  It’s easy to send people an invitation to a party you’re throwing, show them vacation pictures, tell them happy birthday or strike up a short conversation.  And if you do use the sites to contact strangers, then it might be similar to the case of using LinkedIn to find out more information about a recruiter or hiring manager to get a leg up over the competition.

But through a combination of the site’s relentless urging to connect with people who are more on my social periphery (ie: some days, I wonder, “what’s going on with my Sophomore year lab partner?” and can easily find out, rather than sit and continue wondering) and recent comments by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about privacy, I’m starting to wonder what the site is trying to do.

I was (and am) a big fan of the way that Facebook constructed its business model – build slowly and gradually increase its audience by adding universities and colleges, whose members (students) are well-versed in the Internet and word-of-mouth communications, then expand geographically so more features can be added along the way, and markets can be more easily managed as the company grows.  It was nice that the site was the cool, underground and almost secret thing before it was unleashed upon the masses.

But now, the site’s increasingly more confusing privacy settings make it trickier to manage for those who don’t want the whole world seeing their account.  Several of my friends have quit the site because they found it easier than blocking off search engines from finding them.

So the larger problem becomes, how does a website known for innovation continue to innovate when it has grown so large?  And it seems that Facebook’s answer is for people to first grow out their friends lists past the point of knowing someone in the real world and to the point of six degrees of separation connectivity.  While this strategy may pay off on sites like LinkedIn, where you want more professional contacts, so a 2nd or 3rd degree connection is helpful, it fails for a site like Facebook, where you are developing personal contacts.

The site itself has become a global powerhouse and has forever changed the way that we interact online.  But if Facebook stops treating its members like people and more like customers, it will find itself losing relevancy, and more importantly, profits.

So, no, Facebook, I don’t want to reconnect.  I don’t want to connect to someone who I don’t know.  But I do want to use the power of a social network to help me communicate with other people.

If you’ve been following NMH on Twitter (which you should, given how the tweets let you know when I update every day on this sporadic schedule I’m keeping), you might have noticed that the followers count is doing something it hasn’t done in a long time: growing at a more stable rate.  It used to bounce around wildly – one minute, there would be 10 new followers, then 7 would leave, then 4 more would join, then 3 would leave, then 8 would join, 10 would leave…there was no consistency, and I was worried about how to get the numbers on track.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t fully get Twitter.  But I’m starting to.  So I took a page from my own book and have started sending short thank you messages to new followers.  And whaddya know – they’ve stuck around!

I’d love to say it’s because the content in my tweets and on this blog has increased in quality, but the truth is that it’s probably because I’m making a more concentrated effort to connect with readers.

But I digress – this is a blog about job searching, and I’m just talking about something you shouldn’t do at work (but should do for the job search).

When you send in an application for a job online, if you’re lucky, you’ll get an automated response message.  The message will usually thank you for your submission, and will say something about contacting you if the company is interested, but otherwise you won’t hear anything.  So you can spend days, weeks, or even months waiting for a response that may never come.

Even though you’ve crafted a meticulous application specifically for that position and company, you might still get silence.  And even if you follow-up with the employer, you might get silence (although now it’s more unlikely).  So what can you do?

If you have a job search site that tracks your submission, that might help.  But the easiest way to deal with the silence and uneasiness that accompanies it is to ignore it.  Keep sending out applications, looking for other jobs and be productive.

Regardless of the medium in which you contact the employer about your candidacy for an open position, the social obligation of the company to contact you is no longer there.  So keep on looking for work – if you dwell on the silence, the “no” can be even more deafening.

Social networking has changed modern society forever, for both good and bad.  While in the early days of the web, users hid behind the anonymity of a screen name in chat rooms, we now expose ourselves for all to see in our profiles, tweets and blogs.  As we move more and more into the interconnected world of the Interwebs, the rules of polite social contact have changed in the professional and personal worlds.  Here are some of the rules that will govern this brave new world:

• You are allowed to add someone to your network if you have had any form of communication with them, be it as a commenter on a blog, clan member in an MMO, message board buddy, or even in person.  You can add someone if you don’t know them, but you must initiate contact before doing so, introducing yourself and explain why you want to connect with them.  ”Lol ur hott” is not acceptable if you are over the age of 15.
• You cannot send a person more than two messages if they have not responded to you.  This includes messages of any type, from texts to emails to private messages and IMs.  After that, you will have to wait for a response, and if none is given, you cannot get angry with them.  This rule does not apply to emergency phone calls.
• If you have not had any sort of contact with another person for more than six weeks, you must initiate contact through either a generic greeting or a salutation pertaining to a recent event (birthday, holiday, etc.).
• You are under no obligation to attend events, join pages or add groups recommended to you by someone with whom you have not been in the physical presence of for over six months.
• If  invited to an event with an RSVP through the evite and are not excluded from attending based on the previous rule, respond in the affirmative or negative within three days of finding the message.  If you are unsure of whether you can attend, tell the person who invited you why.  This is the only way not answering or selecting “maybe” is permissible.
• If you are online friends with someone but have never met them in person, you must have had conversations over the course of sixty days adding up to a total of four non-consecutive hours.  Texting/IM conversations count for two-thirds of their overall time (due to time spent typing), while phone/voice chat/video chat conversations count for their full duration.  This rule does not apply for business-only relationships (ie: meetings, interviews, sales calls).
• You can start arguments with friends and family online, but as the content is put up on a public forum, others may use the materials in emails or on websites without legal repercussions.
• Similarly, any content you have chosen to put online may be used by your employer (or potential employer) as grounds for termination (or not hiring you).
• If you choose to add more people simply to increase your number of friends, contacts, followers, buddies or whatever the term used is, you are not allowed to send angry messages if they decide to unfriend you or not accept your friend request.
• If you make several lists/groups of people to sort out the statuses/tweets of those you want to read and those you don’t, it is not polite to tell people which group they are in.
• Just because you unfriend someone online doesn’t mean that you are no longer allowed to associate with them.  If they become upset with you over this, determine what steps you need to take to rebuild the burned bridge.
• You are limited to posting seven non-sequitur links to videos, pictures, articles and so on per week.  Any more than that and it just gets annoying.  ”Posting” in this case also refers to emailing or telling people to come to your workspace to see something.
• If any relatives closer to you than a third cousin join a social network and request to add you, you must accept their request (assuming that you have a good relationship with them).  Especially if it’s your parents.
• If someone has not accepted your friend/event/application/group request twice, you can no longer send them a request for that particular thing.
• Unless they bring it up, you cannot bring up any pictures, comments or posts that someone has made online when you are having an in-person discussion.  The rule is not applicable in cases of personal loss, the end of a relationship, or career news (positive or negative).
• If you have “Facebook stalked” someone and then meet them in person, you must pretend that you have never seen or heard of them before.
• People may mock you (online or in person) for any status updates or tweets that have to do with any non-exemplary activity that you make a note of (ie: waking up, going to the bathroom, eating lunch, going to sleep), unless there is something special about that activity (ie: waking up with $100 in your pocket, going to the bathroom in a celebrity’s house, eating lunch at a snazzy restaurant, going to sleep in a jail cell).

Some of these rules have been touched on in previous posts, seen here and here.  Are there some rules that should be in the new social contract that you don’t see on the list?  Mention ‘em in the comments!

For the past couple of months, I’ve been looking into getting a second job.  I’ve found that by using some of the strategies I’ve mentioned (yes, I drink my own Kool Aid), I’ve had more time to devote to other pursuits.  But unfortunately, my applications weren’t getting me where I wanted to be.

I noticed that several positions I was interested in were only posted on one website (let’s-call-it-JobAgents) that offered a Premium Membership plan.  For the Low, Low Price of $10 Per Month (introductory price – $8 for the first month), I would get a personalized page with a Myers-Briggs-type personality metric, a program that matches competencies from my old positions to help me find the ones best suited for me and an extensive diagram that showed what I could do in snazzy graph form.  Additionally, any submissions I made would include a recommendation from JobAgents to employers that they should really look into hiring me.  And there would be updates on new jobs I was compatible with, status updates on applications I’d sent in, and a tracker that shows me who’s been looking at my page.

I cancelled my membership after about three weeks.

JobAgents sounded great, but there were too many holes in the site’s code to accurately do all that it said it would – most of my matches were not in the field I had specified, the personality test had no bearing on my search results, status updates on applications consisted of being told that the application had been sent (I couldn’t send a personalized cover letter or resume or anything either, by the way), and the page was visited only twice, through searches on Yandex, the Russian Google (according to the site’s literature, anyway).

One of the chief problems with JobAgents, besides the fact that I couldn’t search for a job beyond the positions they suggested I applied for (unless I found the posting through a secondary site and copied the link over) was that the matching software wasn’t very good.  I was very limited in responses (“click a maximum of three choices” was the instruction, when I could have clicked all twelve listed), and certain logic chains in the program would not let me down the path to select skills that would have matched me with other jobs that I’m actually qualified for.

Of course, the blame could be shifted to the user – maybe I should have chosen my options more carefully and made sure that my answers all reflected the work I was looking for.  But since this was done through an explanation of what I’d already done, it seemed silly to go about doing it that way.  For example:

One of the jobs that I’ve been looking into is as an advertising copywriter.  I have copywriting experience, and have written other things (press releases, promotional materials, speeches, articles, newsletters, etc.), all of which I had told the JobAgents program.  I specified my field of interest as Marketing/Advertising/PR.  I also mentioned that I have experience with training and seminars.  So obviously, the program decided to not show me any copywriting positions (I had to find them through external links) and instead recommended I try out for real estate and financial training.

One of the other problems I had was a lack of follow-through when I did send in an application.  JobAgents never told me if the application was read, who received it, if the position was filled, or anything.  All it said was that I had submitted it and a secondary notice came out when the position was no longer available.  So what was the message that JobAgents sent to the employers?  How do I know that there was any accountability?

In fact, the only proof that I had upgraded my membership (besides the user page and the charge on my credit card) was that emails regarding their $400 resume review service mentioned that I had upgraded my account.

I’m not saying that recruiters, placement services and job site memberships are all bad – many of them can lead to work, or at least professional connections that one might not have made otherwise.  But if I’m paying for your service, regardless of if it’s $8 per month or $800 per week, make sure that you deliver on your promises and prove that you’re doing your work.

After all, isn’t that your job?