Managing Your Facebook's Self Image

Facebook has earned a very mixed reputation in social networking. Many people avoid using it. Facebook is a social networking technology and a tool for us, like an automobile, or airplane. Generally, we won't ride an automobile or take a flight because there are many automobile and airplane accidents. In fact, drive or ride them with caution. Many overcome their fears of automobiles or airplanes by learning how to operate them, by attending flight school or driving schools and traffic schools. Shouldn't we learn how to manage our self image on Facebook rather than avoid using it?

Many worry about their exposing their personal information on the Internet by using Facebook. Let's think differently. In fact, the Internet contains many tidbits of our personal information. Have you "Googled" your name recently to see what about you is available on the Internet? It is hard for us not to be on the Internet because the information that appears there is beyond our control. The appropriate way to see this situation is to "manage our online self image" rather than to bury our heads into the sand like an ostrich.

In Face-to-Face settings, we manage our self image through sharing appropriate personal information with the people we meet. We talk differently with different people at different contexts. We dress appropriately for different contexts. Shouldn't we do the same on Facebook? Facebook has different features allowing us to share certain things with everyone and selective items with certain groups of friends. In fact, Facebook has advanced features allowing us to manage our self images and still maintain our professional and personal networks separately if we wish.

Based on Goffman's "self-presentation" theory, people project different images to impress different people for different purposes. Therefore, we should "manage" our self images on Facebook, rather than sharing without purpose or avoiding its use. Here are some tips to help you to manage your Facebook self images.

Create appropriate profile

Share appropriate personal information only. Think about what you want your friends know about. Do not disclose something you normally would not share in Face-to-face environments.

Sharing

Sharing your profile, photo, video, personal information with your "friends" not "networks" if you prefer only "friends" to see your sharing. For more information see: How Not to Lose Face on Facebook, for Professors

Accepting friends

Only accept people who you know and wish to be your friends.

Manage your friends

Mange your friends by grouping them. Facebook allows us to group our friends into different groups. In fact, one friend can be grouped into multiple groups. For example, you wish to separate your professional and personal friends. You can group them into Professional and Personal friend groups. If a friend belongs to both groups, Facebook allows us to group them into both groups. This grouping friend feature allows us to share the correct information with right people. This is a perfect feature to use when we have mixed professional, personal, and student friends among our Facebook friends.

Create Personal Learning Environment to manage social networking tools

Generally, we use multiple social networking tools to support our teaching and learning. To keep up with all the activities on multiple social networking sites, integrating all the necessary tools into a personal learning environment is critical. Using iGoogle, Seesmic Destop, or Flocker browser to manage multiple social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter etc.