After I encouraged those of you not currently on a social networking site to promptly do so, I received an e mail from a friend of mine with the subject line reading “scary”.

He was referring to Keith Ferrazi (Never Eat Alone) quoting Dan Schawbel , author of the just-published Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success about the number of hiring managers who play Big Brother during the hiring process. According to Schawbel, “One in five hiring managers uses social networks for background checks”.

Like Obama’s view (as compared to Clinton’s) on inhaling “isn’t that the point”, I take the position being found is what you want.  After all, to Google is now a verb. Living out loud inverts the power pyramid so you have a way to be found by those who you want to find you i.e. potential employers. With this power comes responsibility. Responsibility to not post naked pictures of you and your posse while in Daytona Beach on Facebook no matter how great your tan lines. Even if you have won more medals than any other athlete, hiring managers don’t like their employee to be photographed holding a bong at a fraternity party.

While I am sure the statistic is more or less in line with how many employers actually screen these sites as part of due diligence, you can not live your life looking in the rear-view mirror as you drive.  Don’t misinterpret me.  I am not an idealist.  I am a pragmatist.  Like any power there is a white hat and a black hat of those who hold it, and so it goes with the power of the virtual space.

Fearing a potential employer will discover something about you has become the hackneyed parable of the digital age. It does not mean it isn’t a real issue to manage. You may find it useful to heed some cautionary advice about the need to be careful what you post on Facebook, but to live in constant fear such that your self-expression is denied is not a fun way to live either.  Ask those people who did hard time after Tiananmen Square what life without a first amendment is like. Ferrazi in his newsletter goes on to discuss the appeal of authenticity as a branding tool. Worrying about what you say to whom is anything but authentic.

The current economic climate fuels these superstitions like gasoline to matches as smart, eager twenty somethings leave the comfort of college only to find a hostile job market awaiting them. There is a permanent record in cyberspace true, but most using these sites know that. There are new and insidious ways your cyber-fingerprints can be used against you, but poor judgment is poor judgment.  The internet does not replace thinking.  The discussion rarely goes there, and as a result it adds to the growing cottage industry of ways to protect you from the embarrassment of a bonehead move.

Rather than fear the ramifications of what could be used against you, a better strategy is to use social media for broadcasting your own message.  This is Ferrazi’s advice too, and he is a master networker. On another level, this becomes the digital age’s version of growing up.  It may require a shift in thinking from social to professional, but since the barriers to entry are virtually nonexistent there is no cost to shifting what sites you use or how you use them.

Earlier this year the expression “loose lips sink ships” took on a digital meaning when a Ketchum VP declared Memphis was not his kind of town.

Prior to meeting with executives at Fed Ex (headquartered in Memphis) the VP tweeted his true confession that he “would die if he had to live there”. A Fed Ex employee picked up the tweet, and sent news of this transgression to a wide array of senior leaders at the company defending not only his city, but also the company. For more on this check out Peter Shankman’s blog http://shankman.com/be-careful-what-you-post/.

Talk about your Facebook photo album at your bricks and mortar water cooler, and be prepared for the fire hose of opinion for or against social networking and its tools. Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, and ironically the Ketchum story is used by both sides as evidence to embolden their position.

For those who remember when the length of one’s hair was a symbol not only of what generation you hailed, but also how progressive your thinking, participation on social networking sites has the same power to instantly divide.  Compliance officers are not known for their comfort with transparency or privacy, and a nightmare come true for them is exemplified by the Ketchum incident.

They should lose sleep at night.  After all it is what they get paid to do. The rest of us should sleep soundly knowing we are helping move our organizations and ourselves to an informed viewpoint about the ways and means of web 2.0 collaboration.

For better or for worse the vows of the digital age are written.  We all agree to uphold these vows knowingly or unknowingly whether we are online or not. Even if you don’t tweet someone who does who is standing next to you as you make an off-hand comment may unleash the full force of connectivity in less than a New York minute.  What do you do?

Opting out entirely is one solution, but there is no guarantee you won’t be found anyway.  Turning back the hands on this clock is harder to do than you think. Unless you are willing to unplug altogether (more on this later as I have friends who have done so) choosing how you engage is a better strategy.  The first step to a powerful choice is educating you on how to be a “good” digital citizen.

As they used to say when I was making my living on a trading floor “the trend is your friend”.  This refers to market motion up, down or sideways, but in motion nevertheless. To wish the market move a different direction than it is moving, is futile.  It has a mind of its own. True, the mind may be nothing more than the sum of all those participating, but the market acts alone.  The same is true of the trend of participation in the digital space.

Facebook users now exceed 200 million, and the bulk of these users are over 35.  For better or for worse these numbers will impact how you and I live and work.  Better to be cause in the matter of this impact than at the effect.  How to be cause in a way that works for you and your organization begins with playing with the tools yourself. If you are not currently on at least one social networking site, get yourself on one today. However, be careful what you say. You never know who is listening.

I was raised to respect my elders, and it pains me greatly to go against my proper upbringing; however, I cannot sit idly and show respect for Daniel Schorr and his commentary on Twitter and new social media when he clearly knows nothing about either.

Mr. Schorr (a sign of my proper upbringing) was introduced to Twitter http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101265831&ps=cprs by Weekend Edition host Scott Simon and senior strategist for social media Andy Carvin.

I would caution Mr. Simon and Mr. Carvin to conduct future science experiments of this sort. Introducing a 91 year-old to Twitter on the air shows the holes in not only Mr. Schorr’s understanding of new social media, but also NPR’s and other traditional media outlet’s understanding. I am not certain what the point of the interview was, but I think it was an attempt to illustrate the virtues and challenges of using Twitter across the generations. For those of us who are happy the old world order is crumbling, it came across as a lame attempt at coaxing the aging and resistant into the new social media water.

Mr. Simon calls him “relentlessly contemporary”, but I could not disagree more vehemently.  He comes off as a dinosaur, an anachronism talking about the five miles he walked to and from school each day as he waxes poetically but erroneously about Twitter and its impact.

While excruciating I encourage you to listen to the roughly 15 minutes of pain as Mr. Schorr establishes a Twitter account with the help of his friends. The real agony began when Mr. Schorr began pontificating about what was missing in new media the presence of which would make a difference compared to what old media offered. Given his struggle signing up for Twitter I doubt he has much experience in this realm, and hence little business commenting at all.

What really infuriated me (and showed just how much he and NPR are out of touch with the young folks today) is when he talked about the loss of editing as an art form. According to Mr. Schorr with the ability for ANYONE to self-publish the editing function is lost allowing an erosion of the quality of news and information available.

This statement shows he is missing the very transformative quality of new media. He is right about the easy entrance to publishing, but the model works because it is publishing first and then filtering. The nature of an open community does not mean editing is gone—quite the contrary. If you open yourself to the never never land of the internet you are standing naked to your core. By hitting send you are saying yes to scrutiny far beyond the red pen of a brilliant managing editor at a Washington bureau.

While I am happy NPR and the other major media outlets are venturing into social media, I wish they would understand the aesthetics of the community better. You don’t have to show deference for those who have gone before us in all that you do. It would have been far more interesting to hear from a Millennial or my Net Gen godson about how they use Twitter. Their experience would have at least been authentic as they actually use the tool. Wouldn’t you rather hear from someone with experience than hearing what the tool does not do from someone who had yet to Tweet?

If you have taught in a virtual classroom, you realize how quickly technology evolves.  What I don’t think most faculty consider is the direct impact that has on how we learn.  Moore’s Law has (the notion attributed to Intel guru Gordon Moore that technical capabilities double roughly every 18 month) certainly   caught me by surprise on more than one occasion.  It seems just as soon as I master one tool, the tool evolves beyond my capacity leaving me in the dust.  In fact, I have seen the technical capabilities of the virtual classroom advance within the semester I taught.

The evolution of technology has eclipsed the evolution of humankind’s ability to absorb it.  However, a new way of thinking about this allows for the evolution of learning.  The podcast discussed this evolution, and gave a link to a blog on the topic.  http://connectivism.ca/ This new way of thinking is called Connectivism, and the virtual classroom three years from now will certainly need to understand this and adjust accordingly.  The idea behind Connectivism is in connecting to others we form competence.  The more connections we make, the more we learn.  What is different about this is technology allows for this activity, and “frees” us from having to remember.  Our knowledge becomes a collective stored in our connections.  The virtual classroom three years from today will have to therefore offer students much more dynamic functionality around organization and tagging content.  Otherwise, the learning will suffer.  This is a huge paradigm shift from traditional pedagogy and frankly andragogy.

For the most current thinking on this topic, I turned to Kevin Kelly founder of Wired magazine.   http://www.kk.org/ I saw Kevin speak last week on this topic at the Learn 2008 Conference at the Masie Center.  He talked at length about the evolution of learning due to this phenomenon.  The virtual classroom three years from now, will be that much more connected through the deployment and “perfection” of Web 2.0 and 3.0 tools.  The emergence of an entire second life through a virtual platform will have a particular impact on learning, particularly learning related to three dimensional topics.  For example, it will be much easier to train students on proper disaster recover procedures virtually than check clearing processes.  Regardless, as educators we will have to evolve as Connectivism grows.  Right now, there are many people who are not connected virtually.  As the social networking sites become more widespread, more people will be learning.  No doubt there is research being done now on how this happens.  We must design our courses with this learning in mind.