47% of Facebook Walls Contain Profanity

Posted on May 25, 2011 by matthew.finnegan

For those who are worried about their online brand, some bad news. 80% of profiles contain lewd words either posted by users themselves or by their friends. What’s being posted on Facebook can have serious consequences for one’s reputation and even get you fired (the article even references a study that shows 45% of employers reference potential hires on social media sites). Linkdin has risen as a professional alternative to Facebook to create a professional profile to present yourself in a more controlled light. Each social media site presents an opportunity to present yourself in a different way or to create a different brand. Perhaps your Tumblr or Twitter account is different from how you present yourself on Facebook. Splitting your social media networks into specific spheres that present different fronts can be an effective strategy of insulating parts of your life from each other. Be professional and put your best feet forward on Linkdin, but be open and free on Facebook — so long as your profile is set to friends only and you filter your friends carefully. This may be a response to people feeling that their lives are too out in the open or out of their control if aggregated all in one place.

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One Response to 47% of Facebook Walls Contain Profanity

  1. ek says:
    May 25, 2011 at 11:58 am

    I’m not surprised at the rate of profanity. Despite how we have been talking about how the internet is within the public sphere and that what you post on the internet has a way of staying around people still believe that the internet has some privacy.
    Its like when you are alone and with you friends talking you never think that you boss or someone that you don’t know very well is listening. This is really and example of how the roles that Goffman explained (how you play a different character defending on the audience) really butts heads with the information age of the internet. This is a topic that I wish we covered more in the class because while the internet allows you to tailor your image though personal branding and profile control, it also forces you to play a balancing act between different circle who would normally never collide.
    I also like what you mentioned about how Facebook is for friends, Linkdin is professional and Twitter is for everyone else. I find it fascinating how even in an age where everyone wants more information as soon as they can get a hold of it and where people can see spheres of people’s life when before they never could, that we still segment the internet to mimic our lives. But you right in that we need to be careful and that people still have yet to fully understand that ramifications of posting private things within a public space. Just a thought.

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