Serving Education and Training Markets Since 2006

Stephen Gilfus Discusses Challenges In Determining Amount Of Privacy And Expectation In Social Networks

Entrepreneurship at Cornell Celebration Panel – Using Social Networking in Building an Entrepreneurial Venture

[grandflv id=7427 w=520 h=304 autoplay=true]

Transcript

The internet is not a private network. If you put pictures up from that sorority or fraternity party, people will see them. Actually, I say that because I think one of the biggest challenges and mistakes people make is they put too much of their personal lives online and one of the companies I’m involved in is a company that is around employing students and you’d be incredibly surprised how many students apply for a job and how many employers look on Facebook and go no frickin’ way because students don’t have a real comprehension and that generational gap to understand that it’s a public network. People see everything and they will look for you online. It’s a mix of the varied social networks combined with social cultural change in that – for those of you that are professionals today, using LinkedIn, that is actually a pretty private social network right? I mean, they don’t abuse your e-mail, it’s fantastic for your professional life in connecting with other people and I use the heck out of it for that reason, for both personal and companies but their Terms of Use is about protecting you in that environment. How many people here have ever read the Terms of Use of Facebook? Okay, now that’s telling because nobody today has pretty much read the Facebook Terms of Use but if you look at it and read it, it explicitly states that if you post content on Facebook, they have the exclusive rights to distribute that in anyway they see fit. That’s a little scary right? But the younger generations today don’t think about that. They don’t know that. They think putting all that stuff up publicly is cool, it’s exciting, and it’s fun so it’s a generational gap. I mean, I’m on Facebook and I have tons of friends. I have two modest pictures up there. Nothing incredibly compelling, hopefully, but that’s the way I think about it. Today’s college students and others, to them, they exist online. It’s part of their life and all beyond and you might have a great opinion, Colleen, about it, but I’m not sure how that’s going to play out in regards to when our generation grew up, we had the opportunity to change our lives from what we did in high school and what we did in college and what we did in our professional careers. With college students today, putting their lives online, how do they make that change to the different stages of their life when all of it is online and somehow being viewed.

Scroll to Top