Social Network Privacy + Bonus Rant…

I’ve noticed a few stories cropping up over the past week of employers requiring candidates to give them access to their social networking as well as coaches demanding that athletes friend them so that they can monitor them.

While I think this kind of behaviour is deplorable, and to be honest if an employer asked me to sign in to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn or whatever in the middle of an interview I’d walk out as that is not that kind of organization I want to work for, I’m not sure why people don’t see the simple way round this:

Just have two Facebook accounts!

 

One that is private and has all your pictures of the sordid acts you perform on barn yard animals with custard at the weekend and another account that shows you as an upstanding citizen.

It’s not rocket science…

Sure curating the account might be a bit of hassle, but it should be easy enough to friend a few people and just leave the account to fester, then when they ask you why you update so infrequently just tell them you don’t really use social media. Unless you are going in for a job at a marketing firm as a “Social Media Guru” this shouldn’t affect your chances one bit.

By the by: If you do describe yourself a “Social Media Guru” though seek help, chances are you aren’t. You are a toss pot. This is a completely different rant, but following hundreds of people who are “Social Media Gurus” and posting nothing but articles about increasing your follower count, or maximising your follower potential, or anything that has nothing to do with anything but social media does not make you a guru, it makes you a retard. Having 90,000 followers on Twitter all of whom describe themselves as “Social Media Gurus” just means you have your head firmly shoved up your ass and are participating in the worlds most social and pointless circle jerk.

I’m not going to pretend that I know everything there is to know about social media, in fact I acknowledge that I don’t know much about it, but it’s painfully obvious that having 10 followers who actually care about the content that you are posting and retweet it is more valuable than living in an echo chamber that is a hundred million “Social Media Gurus” waxing lyrical about stuff no one cares about.

Anyway like I said this is a rant for another day…

Apple Punditry

English: The logo for Apple Computer, now Appl...
I miss this logo

I’m going to weigh in on the off chance I’m right but here are my expectations for the apple announcement today:

  1. New Apple TV (I hope with a little bit of storage but I doubt it)
  2. iTV Apple TV with integrated TV, probably available in 32″ and 24″ varieties.
  3. Apps for Apple TV (I don’t own an apple TV but I assume that it doesn’t do apps) People will liken this to the Pippin
  4. Update to the iPod range, with the iPod Touch being upgraded to match the iPhone 4 without the 3G radio of course.
  5. Update to Laptop range, this has been a long time coming and a lot of people are speculating that the MacBook Pro will move to a MacBook Air like form factor.
  6. Possible bump in processors to Apples Desktops, to be honest I’ve not paid attention to the Apple Desktops in 5 years and they don’t seem to have changed aesthetically since the G5 was announced, so it’s possible that they might refresh the desktop case but I doubt it.
  7. Oh yeah iPad 3, which is annoying as I’ve only just got an iPad 2. Higher resolution screen and beefier processor seem a given, I think Apple will continue to sell the iPad 2 this time as the low end alternative moving to a two tiered model like the 3 tier model they have with the iPhone 3GS/4/4S at the moment.
  8. Something new about the App store to mark the 25 billionth app being downloaded, what? I don’t know.

I don’t think any of this is rocket science, I think it’s business as usual. I’d like to see the Apple TV turn into a console/entertainment centre but with Valve thinking about releasing one and the way that Google TV is going I think that the market is too saturated.

I know this is cliché, I don’t actually care very much as I doubt I’ll be buying anything that Apple announce today, but I thought I’d weigh in.

This is the first big Apple event since the death of Jobs, I predict lot of people are going to be comparing Tim Cook to Steve and most of them are going to say that he doesn’t have the same charisma. It’ll be interesting to see how well whatever Tim Cook announces sell without Steve’s “Reality Distortion Field”.

If Apple announce a Pippin 2 I might want one though… I really wanted a Pippin when the first one was announced.

Bandai Pippin (Atmark Player)
Image via Wikipedia