Last week or the week before, Chronicle Herald was running a poll on if it is fair to check a person’s facebook identity (or any other social site, like Myspace or others) when they apply for a job. Here is a link to a story they published soon after the polls closed.
Like many people who responded to the paper’s question, I too believe that the identity you create online is nothing but you. So if you don’t want anyone to know that you are a fan of Paris Hilton or Jus.Timberlake, just don’t tell it to the whole wide world.
Apart from Facebook and mySpace, there are professional tools designed for you to maintain a resume online and create your own space. LinkedIn is one such tool. But if you create two personalities, a professional one for LinkedIn and a personal one for Facebook and they are sort of opposites of each other, you are in trouble.
Once you enrol in any social or professional networking site, it is hard to keep it under covers, that is if you actually want to use that site. I know some friends who have facebook or orkut profiles, but when you visit their page on these sites all you see is a question mark and perhaps the name of the person. There must be a reason (not known to me) why they are maintaining this page, perhaps for potential searchers or friends to find them online and send them an email or something??
If there really is a wild side to you and you want to have fun with it online, sites such as SecondLife could provide some help I guess. Never having used that site, it is not possible or ethical to comment on its usefulness 
. I also know of some other folks who have a totally different identity online, just for fun. Just make sure a google search on your name does not bring up this identity on the first page of results (I have never gone beyond the first results page of Google, if it is not there in that page, then I have to refine my search terms is my rule ! ).
So Clooney, Timberlake and Ani, beware of your online personas
VT
