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When you walk by someones desk in the workplace, your eye is drawn to the pictures and the way they have personalized and organized their space. You pick up on clues to their lives without realizing it. Only display on your profile what youd put on your desk at work. Just because Steve owns a picture his buddy took of him getting sick after an all-night party doesnt mean hes going to frame it and put it out for his co-workers to admire. Dont add anything to your profile that you wouldnt display for your supervisors, co-workers and clients to see as theyre walking by your work environment.

Contrary to popular belief, Facebook isnt about collecting friends. Theres no reward for quantity, and you can have a rich experience on the platform with only a handful of connections. The quality of your Facebook experience will be based on the quality of the people in your network. Create a limited profile for those people that you are on the fence about whether to include. By default, your limited profile contains everything in your full profile, so take the time to edit it down.

Give careful consideration to exactly who sees your profile and when. Dont take the default settings which tend to expose more information than you may be comfortable. Take the time to go through each link in the Privacy area and make necessary adjustments. Maybe you dont want people who are casually searching to know who your friends are or poke you. Maybe you dont want a public profile (accessible to people who are not on Facebook). Public profiles also come up in Google searches.

This is the classic Facebook problem. You let loose for a few hours one night (or day) and photos (or videos) of the moment are suddenly posted for all to view, not just your close friends who shared the moment with you. The result can be devastating. Some have been fired from work after incriminating photos/videos were posted for the boss to see. For others, randomly tagged photos/videos have ended relationships. HOW: Account Application Settings Photos (Edit Settings) OR: Simply un-tag yourself from each picture OR: Make that picture seen only to you, or seen only to a specific list of friends, ECT

Even if you un tag yourself or remove a picture, people could have seen the caption or entire album it was in. People are smart and can have reason to be suspicious when they see pictures that are compromising, out of character, or down-right unprofessional. Beware of red cups.

(2007) Miss New Jersey, Amy Polumbo, appeared on the TODAY show to discuss what she called a blackmail attempt. She described how over the past two weeks, pageant officials had received two packages containing photos of Polumbo taken from her prior, deleted Facebook page. A letter from the anonymous sender stated if Polumbo didn't give up her crown, the photos would be made public.

"From my perspective as an executive adviser/career coach, Facebook/MySpace are electronic diaries that youre willing to have the whole word look at, anytime, anywhere. And, remember people can download your image, comments and save them for later distribution." (Kay Stout, Executive Advisor at Oklahoma Professional Job Search and the author of the Another Point of View, blog)

facebook-professionally/ facebook-professionally/ All photos were found from a Google Image Search. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Created by: Sam S, Resident Assistant, University of Indianapolis