Hari Kumar has been using Facebook for over a year now.As he adds only those whom he knows well to his friends’ list, he knows exactly the number of friends he has on Facebook. So, when he recently noticed that his friends’ list had become shorter, he decided to check the list to find out who was missing. The name missing was that of a close friend of his. Worried, Hari called him up to find out what had happened.It was then that his friend disclosed that he had temporarily deactivated his Facebook account.Hari Kumar’s friend is not the only one to put this option to use.There are loads of netizens who often choose to go ‘temporarily absent’ from Facebook for various reasons.Aditya Gupta is one among them. He has deactivated his Facebook account twice. This IT professional from Jaipur, who has been in Chennai for the last one year, is currently pursuing higher studies.His reason for deactivating his Facebook account the last time was, “I had to focus on my preparation.” “You don’t realise the number of hours you spend on Facebook, once you sign in. It’s addictive,” says Aditya. However, he couldn’t stay away from it for more than two weeks and now he is back, active online.“Because it’s the better medium to connect with friends who live far away,” he reasons.Interestingly, when he was not active on Facebook, one of his friends who now lives in the UK, had called him up to check on what had happened.“It feels good to know that people care for you,” smiles Aditya. He has plans to go away from the virtual world again in November, just 10 days before appearing for his examination.Deepti Ganesh, a Class 12 student, agrees with Aditya when he says that Facebook provides good entertainment. “I don’t like watching TV. I usually read books when I’m free and when I don’t have a book, you can always find me on Facebook. There are so many things going on there,” says Deepti.But she deactivated her account two months ago for about three weeks after she felt bored. She is active on Facebook again to track what her friends are up to.“I felt bored and out of the loop after I deactivated my account,” says Deepti. She points out that those who are very active for sometime, actually want to stay away from it too. “I have friends who don’t use Facebook so often and they never think about deleting their accounts, temporarily or permanently.” However, the reasons for this temporary urge to avoid being active on Facebook varies from person to person. Some say they get bored, while a few others get into unnecessary trouble and close their accounts temporarily. Some even delete their accounts to get noticed.But there are people like Gokul Ramesh, who has never had an account in a social networking site.He uses just G-talk to get in touch with friends.While he agrees social networking sites have their own positive points, he argues that they’re basically business models to make money with users’ personal information.This 22-year-old says he has never felt the need to have an account in a social networking site. “I would rather like to be active in real life than in the virtual world,” he says.Beware of what you post on your ‘wall’!Can you lose out on a job because of your Facebook profile? The answer, it seems, is yes, for a potential employer can change his/her mind about hiring you based on your profile. Those with profiles on social networking sites like Facebook are learning — sometimes, the hard way — that the image they present to their friends on the internet may actually have a bearing on the outcome of their job interviews.Many employers are becoming increasingly net savvy and look to use social networking sites to their advantage by looking out for information about a candidate that he/ she doesn’t disclose during an interview. This practice has led to a debate on whether this is ethical.As a young man in his 20s, who regularly uses Facebook, Venkat says he has been in situations where his Facebook profile has made a difference in the decisions of the companies looking to hire his services.“It goes both ways — Facebook can help you or hurt you — depending on the content. Because of one post in my wall that read — “I’m not sure if marriage makes women happier, but I know for sure a divorce makes a woman richer” — I lost a job that would have got me a big package,” says Venkat, who is now running his own firm. Similarly, Priya, an IT trainer, lost her job because she posted some photos of her friends and her having a good time at a bar during her vacation in Goa.“Someone within the company found my pictures and notified the HR about it. After I got back from my vacation, I was shown the door,” she reveals.Today, all you need to do is google to find out information about any person across the world. But again, employees needn’t worry about a bad hire.An employee can get a better insight as to whether someone is a potential candidate by looking at their FB profiles.The internet is a public forum. So, anything is fair game. One needs to be wise about what they post on the internet as it can be traced back to them (including sites where you use aliases as they do record IP addresses). Don’t post anything that may come back to haunt you, even if it’s an opinion about your work place.According to a few who have lost their jobs, “The key is to pay attention to what you make public and whom you allow to access that information on your page. This can be regulated using the privacy settings in Facebook. It is safe to let friends see information.The idea must be to keep the controls quite granular.” So, for all the wise people around — keep your future employment in mind every time you post something on social networking sites! You never know who might take a look someday.(Names changed on request)
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