It was the beginning of my sophomore year and the entire student body at USC had just gained access to the newbie social networking site. We learned that Facebook originated at Harvard, spread to the other Ivy’s and finally made the 3,000 miles journey west to Stanford, UCLA, and USC. My friends and I carefully crafted our retrospectively primitive profiles by adding birthdays, classes and other basic information. We agonized over the perfect profile picture because if you recall, users were only offered one pixilated representation.

Recently Facebook has undergone scrutiny regarding their privacy settings. It seems that people are suddenly feeling violated by the somewhat complicated privacy options. In fact, recently I have found myself defending Facebook’s honor whenever a disloyal user casually threatens to un-friend the online sphere. I stand by my conviction that social networking will only further infiltrate our society; there is no sense in fighting an inevitable. I’m sure there was much controversy over e-mail in its infantile stage; how impersonal! Can you imagine not using it now?

Honestly, having been a Facebook user for six harmonious years has afforded me the luxury of growing with the network. Mark Zuckerberg and his team have introduced countless changes and tweaks every year, which has made understanding what Facebook is today fairly seamless for long-time members, such as myself.

However, every one of those new additions was met with resistance from users, because people don’t like change. Some people might remember the controversy over the introduction of the news feed about three years ago. The modification took some adjusting, but right on its heels followed its cousin, Twitter.

But back to the privacy uproar of present. Yes, more information is available online; your information to be exact. However, skeptics tend to overlook that users are in full control of how much information is given. The only real requirements are your full name and email, which is a heck of a lot less incriminating than ordering a pair of shoes online.

While the sharing of personal information is admittedly a scary subject, it’s the future. I suppose I just don’t find our future to be bleak. The world wide transmission of information has led to so many wonderful reunions and created an easy way to connect. I personally keep in touch with literally hundreds of people I would have otherwise let fall to the wayside of my life. Aside from personal connections, I feel more connected to the world in general, and I don’t even mind being shown targeted advertisements every three seconds.

Bottom line: Next time you get frustrated/upset because you keep getting Farmville invitations or you just saw that your Ex is engaged…rethink pressing the delete button. The truth is you’ll only end up signing up again once you get bored/curious/over your Ex.

-Heather Sundell

A controversy ignited when a Swiss woman was recently fired for logging into her Facebook from home after she told her work she was too sick to look at a computer. This has reiterated the transparency of Facebook and other social networking sites, and the ways they connect your private life with your professional life on a daily basis.

Applying for jobs out of college, people always warned me about the possibility of future employers scouring my Facebook page to learn more about me. I immediately changed all my profile settings so that only my closest friends and family could view my pictures, information, and wall posts and made sure to delete any pictures that I felt would not best represent my professionalism.

As I found myself jumping into the workforce I continued to Facebook as normal, but was quickly confronted with a new dilemma–the decision of whether or not to accept friendship requests from my new colleagues.

Should I friend them and let them into my private life to view all my pictures, friends, wall posts and status updates? Should I friend them but block them from viewing pictures or other specific information, which they would undoubtedly know I had blocked them from seeing? Or should I ignore the request and go on as usual keeping my Facebook strictly part of my home life? And if I accepted one did I have to accept them all?

It was time to evaluate what Facebook meant to me and how I wanted to use it. When I asked some of my friends what they had done to deal with this I got every answer imaginable.

One friend said “no way, personal is personal and should be separate from the professional”. She actually seemed appalled that colleagues have even attempted to friend me at all.

Another friend said she chooses to keep her page private and sends a respectful message to those colleagues who friend her letting them know that she would like to keep her page private to close family and friends and hopes they understand. Others said they were friends with tons of work people and that they had enjoyed the perks of making connections with partners and colleagues in their field.

And then there are those in the middle who choose to accept requests from some of their colleagues with whom they have formed friendships, but said that it had made them more aware of what they were posting on their page. Almost all of my friends said they would never friend their boss.

It seems there is no right or wrong answer at all. It depends on how you would like to use your page and how much information you like to divulge.

As for me, I have decided to use my page as a way to communicate with friends, family and coworkers. I’ve made it a conglomeration of things in a way. I don’t discuss work on my page and I don’t post anything too private. I have removed my political and religious information, just to be judicious.

Everyone draws their own lines. I’ve made my rule of thumb: don’t post anything I wouldn’t want my mom to see.

Overall, I find it enjoyable to get to know coworkers a little better, see what their hobbies and interests are and share my interests with them as well. I have kept in contact and made some great connections with past coworkers and I look forward to continuing to expand my Facebook network of friends.

-Kaitlyn Anderson

No, this is not a headline in The Onion.  Someone I may or may not know was fired for twittering about how they were enjoying a day in which they called in sick.

Twittering.  Is it a fad we will be ashamed of in 5 years?  – OR – Is it a long-term, useful marketing tool?

Only time will tell.

Written by Mike Slife, Brand Iron Ranch Boss