More Evidence That You Should Not Post Your Drunken Party Pics on Websites...

In a continuing effort to scare people, mostly students, from posting pictures of them partying (or anything that might embarrass or compromise), I am posting this link of an unfortunate story. The full link to the story can be found by clicking on the title at the top.
Basically, a defendant in a DWI case received a harsher sentence because of pictures that were posted on a social networking site. The pictures help establish a pattern of risky behavior. Sometimes first time offenders receive much reduced sentences because they are a first time offender. That is, they have not established a pattern of poor judgement and behavior. This is done to differentiate between those that have just made a mistake from those that have a clear history of poor behavior and are in need of rehabilitation. I think the essence of this sotry is that the person in question received a stiffer sentence because a pattern of behavior was established by her history of related poor behavior. In other words, she had not been convicted of prior crimes, but her pictures served as evidence that showed a pattern of related poor behavior. Very unfortunate, but also a very interesting discussion topic.
This of course, goes back to my hope to educate people to be very mindful and careful of the information that you post. The internet is an open, voyeuristic medium--the information you choose to share could potentially be shared with anyone...including schools, potential employers, even the courts!

Demographics of Social Networking Sites

I came across this interesting artcle on a website that I regularly read, The Silicon Alley Insider www.alleyinsider.com.
The article provided basic information about the demogrpahics of the user base of three of the most popular social networking sites, Facebook, LinkeIn, and Twitter. It did not include MySpace in the data, there are probably a couple of reasons for this. One, they received their information from anotehr source, and the source did not research the data for MySpace. The other might be that MySpace's popularity is declining. Active users have been declining steadily over the last year or so, while Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have been enjoying a growing active user base. Because they have a growing interest, they are more relevant to those that are researching trends of how people use social networking sites.

The graphs and breakdowns are listed in this news article:


http://www.businessinsider.com/is-your-target-audience-on-twitter-facebook-or-linkedin-2010-2