Are You a Victim of "Signaling Theory"?

The bigger question is "Are you a self-inflicted victim of signaling theory?"

We'll get to that in a minute, but first an apology for being radio silent for so long. We've lately been in what a close friend calls a "frenzie", which she describes as an intense period of activity, or perhaps she's chosen the Italian version of frenzy. Anyhow, Georgette and I are downsizing homes, and my hands have been constantly attached to a paintbrush rather than my keyboard.

But, I'm back and the topic of this week's post is something that we all need to think about. This has been churning in my head for 3 weeks, and I've got to get it out.

First some history. As you probably know, the predecessor of MySpace was a hot site called Friendster. This was in 2003, and according to The Wall Street Journal (3/28/09), Friendster had "improved on the concept of building individual Web pages by allowing people to link their Web pages to those of their friends. In the language of sociology, Friendster's innovation led to better online 'signaling'. The relationships between the signals we send about ourselves and our true selves are the topic of a social science called 'signaling theory'".

Nice, that's all well and good for socializing with your friends, but what about successfully managing your brand in the marketplace? All of a sudden, everybody has access to this "cool" information and images that you've posted on a social networking site.

Let's consider Facebook ... according to a NYTimes article (3/29/09), Facebook was about to register it's 200 millionth user that week, up from 100 million just 8 months prior. And, according to an article by Elisabeth Sullivan in Marketing News (4/30/09), "social networks aren't just for the young; the fastest-growing U.S. demographic segment on Facebook is women age 55 and over".

OK, what's all the fuss? Well, how would you like to be denied a job, or even fired, over something that you've posted on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or MySpace? Probably not so much.

The whole theory behind the application of signaling theory is how hiring managers and others are using access to this information in making decisions about your destiny. And, if you think that they don't have access, think again. I heard a story on WBZ Radio today about a manager who persuaded co-workers to connect with an employee's Facebook page as "friends", so that he could gain access to "embarassing" information on that individual's page ... which she gleefully posted. She was fired.

Anyone who is now looking for employment knows that today's marketplace is the most viciously competitive environment imaginable. Yet, so many people willingly publish potientially incriminating information on social networking sites. According to a NYTimes article (3/29/09), "Facebook is trying to teach members to use privacy settings to manage their network so they can speak discreetly only to certain friends, like co-workers or family members, as opposed to other 'friends', like bosses or professional colleagues." But, only 20% of Facebook members take advantage of the privacy settings. The other 80% ... good luck.

My original concept for this posting revolved around much simpler things, like sending thank you notes to every person who helps you, and responding promptly to everyone who reaches out a helping hand. And, I also wanted to focus on basic housekeeping things like don't use email addresses like huggles@yahoo.com. So, if you want to learn more about this stuff, listen to this recent discussion on NPR ...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103613245.

The key message in all of this is BE CAREFUL in this new world order ... Twitter, Facebook, MySpace ... all very popular, and all very accessible, and not always by the people that you want looking at your most personal information.

More on this later ... a lot more.