However, the networking game has to be played right and you need to manage, massage, and treat your network like a living, breathing thing.   I do not hesistate to mention that I know of individuals who have in excess of 500 people in their professional network, unless you are a small business owner, come on?   These are great tips to professionals on how to evaluate and recontruct your professional network to better serve you.

According to Margeret Steen of Hotjobs:

1. How many former co-workers’ contact information do you have?

Focus particularly on your peers and people above you in the organization.

The more people you’re in touch with, the better. If you need to beef up the number of people in your network, a tool like LinkedIn can help, both with searching and with keeping up with former colleagues’ job moves

2. Does your network include a handful of people who could serve as references?

These people need to be willing to recommend you — and they need to know your work well. “References can’t be vaguely positive,” Civitelli said.

If you can’t think of four to six good reference candidates, you need to step up your networking to make sure people you work with know about your achievements

3. How many of your contacts have you communicated with in the past six months?

This is a measure of your active network.

“You don’t need to talk to everyone in your network every three minutes,” said Richard Phillips, owner of Advantage Career Solutions. But you should check in regularly, even if you just send a brief email saying you hope all is well. That way, when you do need to ask for job-hunting help, it will be “emotionally much easier” to make the contact.

4. Have you had lunch or coffee with someone from your network in the past month?

Make a point of meeting in person with a former colleague or another professional connection every few weeks

5. Have you attended a professional event recently?

Attending professional conferences will help you expand your network beyond former colleagues. Becoming active in a professional association will also boost your resume

6. Have you added any professional contacts in the past month?

Your network needs to grow in order to stay vital. Try to add new contacts — either by getting back in touch with former colleagues or by meeting new people — frequently

7. Are you networking “outside the box” — that is, making connections beyond your former colleagues and friends?

Job opportunities can arise from unexpected sources. Marianne Adoradio, a career counselor in Silicon Valley, recommends expanding your network to include some people outside your industry and at different stages of their careers, who can tell you about trends and opportunities you might not otherwise hear about

8. When your professional contacts get in touch with you, do you answer?

“People just kind of steer away from you if you’re not responding,” Adoradio said.

What if a contact is asking for job leads and you don’t have any? “You do have the ability to offer something of great value,” Phillips said: encouragement. This will also increase the chances that that person will help you sometime in the future

Anyone who knows me within my inner circle understand how status messages in Facebook crack me up, I often make cracks and laugh at them because hey, I can. 

I am an avid user of Facebook and do leave an occasional status message so I know how the game is played, but I do try to keep a lid on what I feel is appropriate banter for the general public and what I should keep to myself.

Over time I have observed countless types of status messages and long to decipher where they come from, what the motive is for posting them, and what reactions the user is trying to harness from their friends.

My compiled list of common Facebook status genres:

1) The Mood Status:  This is a very popular one which usually starts with a negative ode’ to Monday morning or the next morning after a heavy night of drinking.  Can also indicate that someone is having a great day.  Examples:  “I feel blessed today”, “Monday’s can bite me”, or “I miss my Aunt Edna, wish she wasn’t tied to the top of the car”.

2) The Joke Status:  This typically implies that there was no original thinking put into it and as a last ditch effort, a joke or riddle was used as a status filler.  Examples: “Two guys walk into a bar, ouch that had to hurt”, “I was staring at the stars last night and wondered, where did my ceiling go?”, “Everyone should breast feed, it’s room temperature, cat’s cant get into it, and the containers are attractive”

3) The Boring Status: This is a status that’s like your providing a GPS coordinate of your every move and it’s not an exciting one at that.  Examples: “Just left for work”, “Throwing clothes in the dryer”, “Eating dinner with my mom”.  Again, we could live without the realtime update, maybe better left to Twitter.

4)The “TMI” Status: All too common but all the while very funny.  Examples: “OMG, my dog just puked on my lap”, “Colonoscopy went well, but (butt) still a little sore from the cam”, “Can someone tell me what kind of green discharges are normal?”

5) The Chronological Status: If you miss too many of these you won’t follow along and will miss something vital.  Examples: “Just took my math test, wow was it hard”, “Took math test two days ago and waiting for my score”, “Sweet, got my score back!”, “Holy Shit I flunked, mother*** ”

6) The Posted it Wrong Status:  Very simple one. Examples: “John is”, “Beth is”, “Chuck is”

7) The Write on Wall Status:  I know a lot of people who fell victim to this when the FB format changed earlier in the year.  Examples: “Dude, that is awesome, lets get ripped!”, “Are you serious?, he’s a jerk, “OMG, LMFAO, LOL, your baby pics are adorable, call me! ”

The Chain Letter Status: One of my all time most hated things on FB.  Examples: “The top 25 list”, “Write 10 things you dont like about me”, “Sign the petition to make puppy mills legal and pass it to 25 of your friends and you will see a picture of God display on your FB page!”

9) The Come Back to Haunt you Status:  This is all too common and makes me cringe when I read it, folks, keep it to yourself best you can. Examples: “OMG, are all managers ‘effing worthless”, “Nothing like being drunk 5 days in a row!”, “Who knew I would get put on the sexual offenders list for that party I hosted last night, hehe”

10) The AWOL Status:  Not a status but rather the complete lack there of.  One of your friends who you added over 6 months ago and they have gone dormant.  Not sure if you need to message them to see how they are or just leave it be.  Makes you wonder, did they get all hyped up for FB for the first week then realized it’s a black hole, crack like substance that requires that you little by little wean yourself off? 

Maybe no status is the best kind…

The researchers found that most people’s “close” network of friends changes approx every seven years and those people are replaced by new ones.  However, let’s not forget that in those social groups still remain the long lasting friendships that never go away, like I mentioned earlier. 

I tend to look at this study in the context of social networking sites and the impact they have on our life at that particular moment in time.   Most would agree that social networking is dictated by a combination of factors: your past, your location, your interests, your lifestyle, and your job.   

What’s the first thing that most people do when they open a Facebook or MySpace account?  You immediately attempt to locate all of your “real friends”, either those from the past or those you just met.  Instantly a chain reaction is kicked off in which you add everyone to your list. 

Next, you analyzed those you work with and determined who met the “cool factor” enough to be added to your friend list as well.  I did it and I know you did too.   Only a handfull of those “professional based” friends will still be around over the years, some will become good friends, some will become references or your professional “posse” I like to call it.   Some you will never see or talk to again…and yet they were a “friend” at one time.  Kind of a loose, interpretation of a strong word and it’s thrown around very easily. 

Are you necessarily the best of friends with all of these people?, of course not.  The same holds true for trusted co-workers, band mates, buddies on your softball team, etc.  There is a sense of collective good feeling to reach out to those who you share a past (or a present) with.  But, we all know the virtual connection is a fleeting one.  You allow this person to penetrate your social network just enough to share a few stories, maybe a referral for a job, make some happy hour plans, or swap old stories of the past until you run out of things to say.   

The act of adding friends in the virtual world is dictated by the context in which we meet those people.  Just one year ago, half of the people in my social network (if you call it that) didn’t even exist to me.  Take a step back and look at who comprises your social network…are they co-workers?….family?….neighbors?…direct reports?…your current manager?…a friend of a friend of a friend who walked your sister’s dog one night last July? 

Your social network is expendible and the members come and go like the wind.  You change jobs, you move, your family situation changes, you meet someone new, you part ways with someone.  All of these “conditions” dictate the make up of who your friends are at any given moment. 

As you’ve guessed by now, I can be a little cynical of social networks and what their real value is.   It is not a cyanisim grown out of hatred or despise for the world of social networking, but rather based on experiences or the experiences of other people I know.  I have seen people brought to tears by messages left on social sites, I have seen people misinterpret something causing anger.  I have seen people say things on a social site of which most people would not have shared with anyone had it not been for the website they were on.  I have seen people alienate themselves in jobs based on a purely accidental posting of something better left unsaid. 

I have grown to respect the social network because it can serve a purpose, some of which are heeded warnings.  Do keep in touch with trusted co-workers even after you leave a job, do keep in touch with people who you share a history with, do keep in touch with people who are real world friends, and do use a social network for the benefit of the common good (a charity, a cause, etc).  Don’t use social networking to air your dirty laundry, don’t use social networking to spread hate and scorn for others, don’t use social networking for your own personal  or professional gain and not recognize the actual “person” who made it possible (this applies more to LinkedIn), and finally don’t use social networking as a tool to elevate your virtual status among your peers…because frankly you don’t have a status, none of us do.  

When I have examined my own Linked In network, my Facebook network, my “real world” friends (some of which also live in the virtual world with me), I come to some conclusions.

My conclusion is a simple one, social networks are 5% useful, 5% virtual voyerurism, and 90% pure, internet based entertainment (as is this rant although I tried to infuse some truths). 

The only internet past time that conquers social networking is PORN.

The skinny- it’s complicated and your privacy is not high on the priority list, nothing on the web is people.   In fact- the code behind Facebook is a complicated weave of spaghetti containing your content, photos, submissions, and any other items you submit for public viewing.  What does this mean?  It means your personal information is woven into a unregulated and uncontrolled virtual desert open to anyone – and FB can keep all your personal shit after you leave the party.

Whatever, whenever, or with whomever you send a photo, a wall post, a message, or an event – all that information gets stored on FB servers and can be retained for a long period of time.  The reason- the FB gods have designed the site to allow a deactivated person to easily come back and reactivate their account.   This being said- all content you submitted can magically “reappear” to make the process easier on you.  The rational is that communicated information is always “there”.   If you email me and five minutes later cancel your email account, does that email you sent me suddenly disappear?  No.   FB management has designed the site in the same fashion and for some reason it pissed a lot of people off – funny considering everything on the internet operates under the same logic.

There are two main blunders that users make.  The first mistake is compiling too many Friends without organizational control of who they are, how you know them, and what their relationship to you is.  The other mistake being poor security control over Photos and Tags.   As an experiment, a college professor once asked his students to stand up in front of the class, plug in their laptops, and show everyone their profile on the overhead.  Not one person volunteered for the request.  The thought of a FB profile being exposed in a room full of people invoked thoughts of embarrassment, vulnerability, and shame.

The professor had intentionally created a startling reality for his students.  They regarded their profile as private even though essentially millions of users, application developers, advertisers, search engine tracking software, and potential employers can see it everyday.

Back to the Friends and Photos thing.   Okay, so you’ve added some people who now have access to view your profile and you’re pretty cool with the results.  You do so some talking, share some photos, post some wall comments, update status to declare your current state of mind or relationships, or whatever.  What is often overlooked is the information trail that is created.   As your Friend’s list gets bigger, so does the audit trail of data, so does the list of people who can see it, which in most cases is cool, typically you add stuff because you want people to see it, no biggie.

However, as the Friend list grows, so does the accessibility to content that you might want to keep to yourself.   In fact, I actually know of people in the workplace who have unintentionally alienated themselves from co-workers because of the status comments they habitually post to their FB page.   Comments like “I’m tired of work” “Why am I here?” or “I can’t believe my manager just asked me to do something”.   As innocent as it seems to the poster, the internet has a sneaky way of delivering it’s own interpretation of content to the on looker.   You know that sarcastic email you sent to your best friend only to have them get pissed off?  It’s a common occurrence in the virtual world, FB included.   Apparently, these people forgot that they carelessly added half their office to their Friends list.  The same goes for Photos- photos that you personally would never post, but can you control how someone else Tags you in one of their photos?  Ahhh Haaaa – now that is where you’ll get in trouble.

There are Friend and Photo Tag security features that most users do not use very efficiently, or they just don’t know about them.   The basis behind these controls is to better categorize your Friends and place controls on who can see what, same thing for photos and who can see those you’re tagged in.

Nick O’Neill is a contributor to the website AllFacebook.com and is considered an expert on the proper and safe ways to use the site.  These are strategies that he offers users to better secure your environment:

1. Use Your Friend Lists

I can’t tell you how many people are not aware of their friend lists. For those not aware of what friend lists are, Facebook describes them as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can create Friend Lists for all of your organizational needs, allowing you to quickly view friends by type and send messages to your lists.”

There are a few very important things to remember about friend lists:

• You can add each friend to more than one friend group
• Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
• Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them

A typical setup for groups would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your friends to see photos from the party you were at last night, but you don’t want your family or professional contacts to see those photos. Using friend lists is also extremely useful for organizing your friends if you have a lot of them. For instance I have about 20 friend lists and I categorize people by city (New York, San Francisco, D.C., Tel Aviv, etc), where I met them (conferences, past co-workers, through this blog), and my relationship with them (professional, family, social, etc)

2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results:

Now that you’ve decided that you would like to remove yourself from Facebook’s search results, here’s how to do it:

1. Visit your search privacy settings page
   
2. Under “Search Visibility” select “Only Friends” (Remember, doing so will remove you from Facebook search results, so make sure you want to be removed totally. Otherwise, you can select another group, such as “My Networks and Friends” which I believe is the default.)
3. Click “Save Changes”

3. Avoid the Infamous Photo/Video Tag Mistake

At the least, a tagged photo/video can result in personal embarrassment. So how do you prevent the infamous tagged photo or video from showing up in all of your friends news feeds? It’s pretty simple. First visit you profile privacy page and modify the setting next to “Photos Tagged of You”. Select the option which says “Customize…” and a box like the one pictured below will pop up.

Select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.

Hope some of these tasty treats will make you a more intelligent FB user.

24:  Wow?  You’re humble, quiet, and a narcissist all wrapped into one?

23:  I’m glad you love your bulldog puppy more than your parents.

22:  I thought SPAM only occurred in my email.

21:  They make creams and lotions for that issue on your leg.

20:  Yes, it is sunny out and it’s winter…the irony?

19:  I’m a fan of ketchup myself.

18:  The scanner, both amazing and frightening.

17:  Writing on a wall used to get your hand slapped from mommy.

16:  Am I allowed a spiked club instead of a Pillow to fight with?

15:  People You May Know, or just use them to bump your Friends tally higher.

16:  Invite Your Friends to join Facebook, because they’re tired of the four people they hang out with.

15:  Are you serious?  As long as your brother doesn’t join Facebook, he’ll never know you felt that way.

14:  I think the annoying chick on the Progressive car insurance commercials is cute.

13:  I pick my nose…a lot!

12:  Oh my – you’re hair hasn’t changed much from 1987.

11:  Just completed a Mafia War on my neighbor, it’s not pretty.

10:  Exhausted: John C. Holmes, the Real Story – I didn’t see that movie come up on the Which One Defines Me List?

9:   Poke Me and I’ll kick your ass.

8:   I just Saved The Planet by signing an electronic petition – it was that easy?

7:  I was mentioned in the Note People I’m not real fond of…

6:  No…

5:  More…

4:  25…

3:  Random…

2:  Things…

1:  Seriously!