As many people have come to learn recently it is extremely important to be careful what you are posting on social networking sites such as MySpace. The Wall Street Journal produced an article that highlighted the importance of this, particularly in regards to how it could impact prospective employment opportunities. The article, entitled, “Mr. Pratt Cleaned Up His Act to Impress an employer; Killing a MySpace Profile,” highlighted the actions of a 22 year old, Mr. Pratt, who had at one time had a profile on MySpace that was somewhat boisterous, to say the least. The profile in question contained photographs of the individual drinking and also contained information about his dating activities.

After the young man in question obtained an interview for a job he very much wanted, it apparently occurred to him that his profile on MySpace could be somewhat of a liability in his landing this very coveted job. His fear was certainly well-founded, as more and more employers as well as other entities, including colleges and universities are turning toward MySpace and using it as a sort of preliminary background check. In many cases, even if an employer or school isn’t actually going to MySpace first to see exactly what you might have posted on your page, a simple search on Google is all it takes to find that you have a page and quickly lead anyone who might be interested in looking right to your page and what is on it.

As Mr. Pratt and many others have learned; however, it isn’t always so easy to simply delete content from a MySpace page that might be somewhat embarrassing later on in future academic and employment endeavors. This is because many search engines, including Google, index new material as well as actually copy the pages onto their own computers. This is done to act as a back-up just in case the original should happen to disappear. As a result, even if you delete the material on your profile page that might prove to be embarrassing later on, there is a strong chance that it has already been copied by numerous search engines and therefore the content is still quite available all over the Internet.

What many people fail to understand is that anytime you post any type of information on the Internet, including videos, pictures and other information on a public site, that information has technically been published. Since spreading the information is the goal of publishing, it very quickly spreads far beyond your reach and you will no longer have any control over the information, including whether you can remove it. Once the information has gone out it in essence becomes part of the public domain.

While MySpace and other public social networking sites serves as the perfect place for many individuals to share varied details of their lives, increasingly those details are coming back to haunt numerous users. In fact, more and more employers are basing their hiring decisions on the presence and type of online content posted by job candidates.

Obviously, the need is certainly increasing to be extremely careful of what you are posting on sites such as MySpace.com and blogs. Beyond this; however, it is also important to make sure you are keeping an eye on what your friends and acquaintances are posting about you on their pages and blogs as well. Even if you are being judicious about what you are putting on your own pages, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone you know is exercising the same caution. All it takes is for one friend to post the details about your partying the weekend before to put a future college or job application in jeopardy.

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