Look -- No, Really, Look! -- at those Privacy Settings
Many of your Facebook profile management issues can be solved with utilizing the privacy settings in Facebook. After the Beacon advertising incident, where Facebook was criticized by privacy advocates such as Moveon.org, they went back into the workshop and built some of the most sophisticated privacy settings in the social networking market. Unfortunately, says Dr. Mariann Hardey, who pens the blog Practising a Proper Social Demeanor: A Guide to Facebook Etiquette, not many people use them.
"Whilst the level of the privacy in terms of settings is indeed now fairly sophisticated, even to the level where you can specify particular individuals to be included, or distanced from a particular network or information, there is an almost disregard or only latent awareness about the significance of such settings," she wrote CIO in an e-mail.
While it's impossible to know how many Facebook users tinker with the settings, most privacy experts share Hardey's sentiment.
For starters, the privacy settings can be changed by scrolling your mouse over the "settings" link in the upper right corner of your Facebook home page after you log in. Click on "privacy settings" and then on "Profile" to control who can see what.
It gives you general options to limit views of certain information to groups such as "Only Friends," "Friends and Networks," or "Everyone" on Facebook. A fourth option, and we recommend utilizing it, is "customize," which allows all your friends except certain Friends on your list (such as your boss maybe?).
This could be especially helpful for those "Pictures Tagged of You" category, which tend to lead to the professional horror stories we read about in the news.
"The examples of individuals posting lewd and rude photos to Facebook to then be sacked by their employer is just one example of this," Hardey says. "On the one hand such images represent a personal portrayal of social life intended for only friends, on the other the 'open' access means that such images can be taken out of context and take on new meaning depending on who is looking through them."
Build Up Your Bio
All that being said, Dixson says if you're going to be on Facebook and Friend professional contacts, you shouldn't be afraid to express yourself a bit with interesting content. Otherwise, there's really no point to friending anyone outside your immediate friend circle, she says.
"You need to be somewhat personal on Facebook or people think you're using incorrectly," she says.
So you might compromise a bit, excluding highly personal information while sharing some of the safer stuff. In the basic information fields, Facebook gives you the option to include your religion and politics. Because (in most lines of work) you wouldn't touch those two hot-button topics in a meeting or on your resume -- and let's face it, your close friends know your affiliations in those categories anyway -- there's really no point in including it, Dixson says.
But, on the other hand, you should feel free to have at it a bit more in the fields for things like music, interests, movies, activities, etc. Yes, a very discerning Friend could read between the lines of your choices here, but it's a risk worth taking if you want to appear social and build social capital.
Many times, Dixson says, you might find some common ground in these areas with professional contacts, leading to a better relationship that can help you in business.
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