Social networking or Social Security?

I invited some old friends to join me on Facebook. You are too old, they said. It is for millenials only, they said. Fortunately, Google did not discriminate and I find myself in a world only a little less strange than SecondLife, a world of prolix profiles and copious photos, where my 21-year-old daughter seems to swim with dolphins whilst I languish with sea snails. It is fun and potentially addictive and a sure cure for loneliness. Email seems rather quaint when you can communicate with a total person like this.

The applications for business are pretty obvious and some are already in use. You can certainly read a resume, conduct an interview and do all sorts of recruiting, as some CPA firms are already doing. You could probably market to a client prospect as well. Internally, you can build esprit de corps by having employees sign each other up as friends. I see a perfect application for our Tomorrow's CPA program: having members provide links to their profiles and maybe linking up with each. To talk about accounting, of course.

I don't see all that much difference with MySpace, though the atmosphere seems a little less adventurous. I do see some potential problems with both programs--addiction, sharing of too much information, rampant mendacity and social fraud and of course prurience. I don't know that I will make frequent use of social networking in my non working life. But anything can happen once I retire.