Elizabeth pointed out a NYT article to me about employers checking myspace and facebook pages on job applicants that I thought was interesting and a bit odd.
It strikes me as strange because this has all be done before… It sort of happens in waves over the years as more people get online. A lot of this has happened back in the 1990s when people were first starting to build their own web pages; geeks went overboard posting edgy stuff, and tech employers went overboard freaking out about it. Eventually tech companies realized they were overreaching themselves by telling people what to put on their personal sites, and the employees learned where the “too far” line was, and they met somewhere in the middle.
Now it’s happening as non-geeks have ways to create their own pages online in myspace or in blogs — they post questionable stuff, and their non-tech employers freak out. The furor over people’s blogs and myspace pages will correct itself over time.
You know how whenever someone new gets on the internet, they start forwarding all the goofy neiman marcus cookie recipes and chain letters until they realize how silly that is? Then their mom gets e-mail four years later, and does the same thing. Then four years later, grandma does it.
It all goes in cycles.