by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: June 24, 2010

Social media offers a chance for people to share their ideas, opinions, jokes, advice photos and life stories with others who may become friends over time. That is in an ideal world.

In the real world, social media also offers the potential for harm from social predators, the mentally disturbed, the boss, the law, and those who seek to intrude on personal lives or to do harm to others. There are some wrong intentions that people have when becoming engaged in social media and those wrong intentions will affect the lives and reputations of those who invest themselves on a personal level on line.

Those who want to become famous or to gain attention from strangers in risky or outrageous ways are using social media for the wrong reasons. Most social networkers want to interact, but not with thrill seekers who commit escalating and outrageous on line acts in order to attract attention the easy way. Nude photos, excessive and continuous sexual content, and aggressive attempts to become instant best friends with strangers are risky behaviors that will draw more of the negative kind of attention than any other type of attention. There are positive and healthy ways to earn a high public profile and there are negative and unhealthy ways, just as in the real world. The problem is that, online, nothing goes away and everyone can wind up with a copy of regrettable behavior to pass around.

Selling and spamming is a distinct no-no in social networking, which is not there to provide a captive audience for commercial predators. Many sites will sanction members who bother everyone by relentlessly hawking products or by annoying obession with letting everyone know about their business ventures. There are ways to introduce and discuss a business, project, profession or product, but there is always the chance that someone will identify the conversation as spam and will complain about it.

The difference between publicizing and letting people know about a business or for profit artistic venture and outright, persistent hawking of specific products, ideology and services is a subjective matter. A person who blogs about the process, start to finish, of putting on a play can get away with including information about tickets and prices. A person who is in a certain business can talk, among other topics, about their services and products, but not with the idea of using the social networking group or forum as a free advertising

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>