When survey results like these are released, it is typical to focus on the negative. Yes, we know people are not hired or fired because they post obnoxious and inappropriate photos or comments. We’ve discussed the repercussions of this type of behavior before.

There is, however, a positive side. Namely, that your social media page can help get you hired. It shows your personality and fills in the gaps left by a resume or an interview.

Use of social networking sites can also increase odds of getting hired, with employers citing a good feel for the candidate’s personality, a profile that supports their qualifications and a candidate who showed creativity as reasons for deciding to hire someone based on their online postings.

Keep posting, don’t let these numbers scare you. If you use common sense while being yourself, your Facebook or Twitter pages just might help you take the next step!

Late last night, news broke that Facebook was launching “Facebook Lite.” No one knows exactly what it is, but signs point to an unpleasant week for Twitter. This could mean a service that now offers the features we love about Twitter, like real-time updates coupled with Facebook’s dependability and strength (i.e.,Twitter + Facebook.)

If Facebook does this right, Twitter may be dead in the water. Facebook has the financial resources and technical superiority to challenge Twitter and they mean business. Twitter doesn’t appear to have the money to fight this assault, faces a seemingly endless stream of bad press and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.

Is it too soon to call Twitter’s swan song? Possibly. Maybe we’ll know tomorrow or even within the next few hours.

We’ll leave you with this little nugget from The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien:

As of yesterday, Facebook has taken a serious step in its efforts to be internet champion. According to TechCrunch, they purchased a service called “FriendFeed.” A significant acquisition because of FriendFeed’s superior real-time news feed, which reminds us of another prominent little website (*cough* Twitter). Further, FriendFeed, like Twitter allows you to “follow” without having to confirm a “friendship.” This is bad news for Twitter, which is constantly hampered with seemingly endless security and capacity issues and has yet to figure out how to turn a profit.

Folks, the bottom line here is to continue to tinker with social media, use it wisely, but keep an eye to the future. Everything is still very new and it’s going to be a while before we see how things shake out. A social media “king” has yet to be crowned like Microsoft for software or Google for search. Don’t feel like you have to jump on and spend endless hours on every new service that pops up. Our advice is to keep abreast of the landscape, use the sites you like and do what works best for you and your business.

As our worlds become more interconnected, it’s more likely you’re going to get yourself in hot water if you shoot your mouth off online. Mashable recommends using your privacy settings, but I don’t think it goes far enough. Yes, use your privacy settings, separate your life but seriously reconsider posting anything you wouldn’t want on the front page of the newspaper. That way you’ve got all your bases covered and will not have to worry that something could come back and bite you in the backside.

Related: How to manage your image new media style.

Your mission has been commendable as in Facebook’s younger days it was purely a friends and social gathering site. The internet lacked a way to connect professionally and needed a place to go where you look your best that wasn’t clouded with tons of ridiculous applications.

To date this opening has virtually been fulfilled by LinkedIn. However, it has been slow to keep up when compared to other social media services and is likely to suffer for it.

Our Beefs:

• Technical laziness:
  Login at a premium. Until recently, as it seems LinkedIn has just quietly been updated, you not only had to login every time you visit the site, but were pestered to upgrade to their “premium” service. These have not been issues for some time with other modern social networking sites. Did they finally figure out that only pain comes when you try to put the cat back in the bag and ask it to pay for the service?

  
  Anemic app directory. Their Application Directory only has 10 apps. If there are more, we haven’t been able to find them. Plus, their Wordpress app is unpredictable when it comes to working with self-hosted blogs. LinkedIn’s currently policy only allows certain developers to add applications, with permission, of course. While we understand they don’t want all the noise open development brings, their tight controls have also constrained progress. Is there no happy-medium?

• Lack of socialization. Also, quietly changed as of late, you can now comment on status updates. Again, LinkedIn comes in far behind other sites. As it’s late to the game, people have already have other established places where they socialize (ahem Facebook). LinkedIn has long functioned mostly as a business directory, akin to sitting in a library. Lots of information, but not much in the way of interaction.  They’re making an effort, but trail their competitors like Facebook, where everyone’s mother, grandmother, co-workers and bosses all seem to be. You can now make lists there to separate your worlds and have it all in one place with real time updates. Where is stodgy LinkedIn going to fit in this scenario? Only time will tell, but it could have something to do with Rupert Murdoch.

A Dark Horse Approaches
Enter the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Not exactly the most progressive and open-to-new-ideas kind of place, or so we thought. As with all newspapers these days, WSJ needs more revenue sources to remain relevant in a post-print era. Reported by TechCrunch, WSJ wants a piece of the professional social networking pie now solely dominated by Linkedin. They are putting their money where their mouth is and have hired outside guns to develop what will be called “WSJ Connect.”

Regardless of whether this venture is successful is beside the point. LinkedIn, even with the current updates, has become stagnant and if they don’t get moving someone is going to come along and be the Google to their Yahoo. There’s a lot of motivation out there to capitalize on the world’s hunger to connect at a professional level. Newspaper organizations remain community hubs and they absolutely have to find new revenue streams. Social networking done right could be their savior. Facebook has moved beyond the domain of bored college kids to entire families/networks. LinkedIn has functioned well because of the desire to keep personal and professional worlds separate. However, as work and leisure worlds collide and Facebook continues to improve, LinkedIn is going to be in trouble.

For the most part, LinkedIn is not a place where people go to be social and it’s getting lapped by its competitors. Once another site figures out how to let people be social and professional – LinkedIn will be doomed.

Bottom line: the writing’s on the wall, or rather the “Facebook Wall?”

This is not so surprising to us. In our experience using Twitter, it’s mostly comprised of alpha geeks, journalists, people of note, bloggers and businesses looking for, well, more business. The key links here are business and information sharing. Neither of those things would be interesting to teenagers.

Teens want to connect with their friends, share photos, videos and amusing links. They’re not going to be so interested in the latest breaking news or coupons. Barring the 2008 elections—were you really interested in Iran or 20 percent off when you were 17 and mommy and daddy paid for everything?

In our view, we don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon or at least the concept of it. However, Twitter has got to figure out ways to:

1. make money
2. integrate with more established social networks like Facebook if it really has a sustainable future.

We see the social networking sites of the future integrating entire social networks (personal and professional – Facebook & LinkedIn), newswires and ways to share large quantities of information while connecting people in unprecedented ways (Twitter), pulled together with more traditional e-communications (email & instant chat).

The first site to harness all these characteristics into one user-friendly working model will, in our opinion, win the internet.

Making a common name, like my name–Jon Norris, stand out in the crowd is a tough proposition, but creating a Google Profile has made it easier to find information about me specifically. For Seattle area searches, my profile now appears on at the bottom of the first result page when my name is entered.

Creating a profile also gives you a place to control what information you’d like associated with your name. Create one here.

Our profiles: Jon and Katie

Note: A word of caution – as with any public profile, be careful with the information you put up, such as your home town or birth date, as it’s possible that your Social Security Number could be reverse engineered using that information.

Our previous posts primed and made you presentable. Technically, Twitter is much less friendly to everyday internet users. Jon calls it more “hardcore computer nerd.” Once, you get the lingo, however, it’s really very simple.

These guidelines should help:

• Know where you’re @. An “@” sign is computer language for identifying a user. My Twitter handle is @Katie_Bishop and Jon’s is @jon_bpi. Twitter search is not always the most thorough and advice you’ll find on any reputable tech blog, (e.g., @mashable) is don’t put you’re handle on the portion of your bio that asks for your name, put your actual name. This will make you more searchable.
• Bit.ly is your best friend. As you’ve only got 140 characters, sites like Bit.ly or Tiny URL (to name a couple) help you make the most of those characters by condensing links.
• Know your “R’s.” – the difference between “reply” and “retweet.” Reply when you want to address a specific person. These tweets will only go to mutual followers. Only retweet or RT when you think this information is important for all your followers to see. If you blast your every move on Twitter you are in grave danger of becoming a  “twitter s***ter.” Not a title you want.
• You want to be Mentioned.  A mention happens anytime someone puts your handle (e.g., @Katie_Bishop) in a tweet, be it a reply, retweet or just mentioning you in their tweet. When someone searches for you on Twitter your mentions will appear on the search results. You can check for your own mentions by clicking on your handle link on the right side of your Twitter screen. Programs like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop make it easy to view mentions from your desktop.
• Hash Tags. These are key words that can help make you more searchable on Twitter. They’re often found at the end of a tweet with or without a “#” sign in front of them. For instance, if I want to know about tweets concerning Microsoft, I would put #Microsoft  at the end of a post about that company or put it into Twitter Search to see what people are tweeting about that subject.

Have more questions? katie@bigpictureimage.com, @Katie_Bishop or post below.

Next post in the series will be on Facebook.

This second post in our series will provide basic guidelines for presenting yourself on Twitter.  Our next post will feature more technical basics, but first lets talk etiquette.

• Don’t tweet nonsense all the time. Be useful. Provide valuable information/ insight and you won’t need tricks or gimmicks to gain more followers. Add some personal flair, however, a little goes a long way.

• Choose your shorthand carefully. U and R in place of “you” and “are” makes you look lazy or like you’re emulating a 15 year-old. If you find yourself running out of space, reword the tweet or split it up. We also see people who make up their own shorthand. Just because its logical to you doesn’t mean it will be to everyone else.

• Be parsimonious. You may have alot say, but you don’t need to say it all at once. If you unleash a plethora of tweets in a short amount of time you’re going to clog up people’s feeds. Unless the information is really useful and urgent spread out the tweets.

• Its not polite to boast. Just like your mother taught you, no one likes a braggart. Same goes in the Twitterverse. Sure you want to promote yourself personally and professionally, but do it in a way that shows your value and not how well you can self-aggrandize. A good way to lose followers is to run around obnoxiously singing your own praises. Do your work, let it be known and let quality speak for itself.

• If you’re not sure what you’re doing, stop throwing things out there hoping they will stick and learn from the pros. Reporters are often great tweeters. They know how to write interesting and concise posts that aren’t nonsense or boastful. Check out: @moniguzman, @reporterAJ and @BrierDudley to name a few of our locals.

More thoughts? Email: katie@bigpictureimage.com or post below.

Update: More good stuff put out today straight from the horse’s mouth.

A very cool concept though, and definitely worth keeping an eye on. Sign up for Wave updates, or watch this (abridged) announcement video to see what all the hoopla is about: