Facebook Forever

During our college years we humans are prone to trying different things, experimenting and letting loose more liberally than we may at any other time in our lives. Combine this with the prolific use of Facebook, and other social media sites, and we may be brewing a recipe for disaster. Studies show that nearly 80% of potential employers now use social networking searches to choose their candidates. That means those photos, comments and opinions you have been sharing on Facebook may be viewed to judge you; by employers and maybe others including schools, mates and potential relationships.

But viewing you at your most experimental may be only the tip of the ice-berg. At present you have no control over what happens to your creative imagery once it is posted. In the future you won’t have any control over subtle changes made to your images by third parties and just in case you didn’t know it already, your images once posted stay in cyberspace forever. That’s right, even Facebook retain copies of every image posted and other information as well. Think that’s a bit scary – check this out. It turns out the future of Facebook and other sites may involve subliminal messages and imagery implanted within our personal pictures and profiles.

Not only can other people’s perceptions of us be changed, altered and lied to, but also our own memories can be corrupted and that is what future advertisers will want to take advantage of, using our Facebook accounts. They will potentially re-write our pictorial and blogged histories to include branding that didn’t exist during the event at the time. Some very high profile techies are warning that not only will this happen but that our own memories will be altered to accommodate our revised histories. Scary stuff but according to the pundits it's easier to do than we think and coming soon to a social networking site near you.