Twitter & "Social" Networks

[Geezertronic]

We have learned that the Recruitment of older hands win hands down on the younger staff, who essentially, sadly, just don't wanna know. Sorry, thats the way it is.

That's not the way it is at all... some of the grads that we see coming through the company I work for have a much better attitude than the more established staff who are the ones who don't make the effort they should do. Plus grads are cheaper in the short/mid term which is what management seem to care about these days.

 

[Mojo]

...but the part about facebook that really ****es me off, is all the things people click 'like' to. Its that stuff that clogs up the newsfeed and hides real things to read...

You mean like you?

 

[Aussie_Rail]

You mean like you?

LOL sshhhh! Its only annoying when other people do it and when they click like for crap things!

 

[Greenback]

That's not the way it is at all... some of the grads that we see coming through the company I work for have a much better attitude than the more established staff who are the ones who don't make the effort they should do. Plus grads are cheaper in the short/mid term which is what management seem to care about these days.

That's slightly different to what I think TrainBrian meant. I think he was referring to the recruitment of more mature staff compared to younger staff. If he was, I think he's got a point, if not, I apologise!

As an example, when I wa sa manager in one of my former careers, it was the young lads and lasses of 18 - 23 who were more likely to come in tired and hungover after a late night. One in particular used to be in the casino until 4am, then come in at 9 and ask if he could go home at 12 because he felt rough. He would then have a kip in the afternoon and start gambling again in the night!

Of course, not all the younger staff were like this, and not all of the older recruits were angels, but on balance, the older recruits had learnt from experience what they could and couldn't do before work! They had the better attitude towards work as a result!

 

[Death]

Personally, I use both Twitter and Facebook in uneven measure...Nowadays I tend to keep my Facebook (More or less) updated, and update my Twitter whenever I feel like it.

My views on both though are pretty much love/hate...

• Facebook is great for staying "connected" with people all over the World, and comes in extremely useful for keeping in touch with those less than local friends who ye can't see very often, but wouldn't want to lose touch with. As a portal for keeping informed as to what's happening in one's social circle, it's extremely handy!
  
  However...It does have a large number of problems at many levels. Aside from the numerous privacy issues (Which is why I treat it like a public bulletin board, and don't post anything that wouldn't be appropriate on such) and the surprising number of people who think "I just chucked up 20 pints of Fosters innit?" is appropriate for a status update, the obscene amount of overused and badly written AJAX code on the main version of the site has encouraged me to switch to using the Mobile version of Facebook almost exclusively (That's why all of my statuses appear to have come from a mobile 'phone).
  On top of all this - Speaking as someone who played around with the Facebook application platform at the developer level whilst creating a monetised app for an SEO company once - The Facebook application framework opens up a very large number of potential security loopholes for anyone who uses it, which is why I ignore all application requests out of hand and try to keep the platform disabled on my profile whenever possible. hock:
  .
• Twitter infuriates me a lot of the time, as I can never fit what I want to say inside the 140 char limit without having to resort to either using SMS "English", omitting pertinent details, or having to post multiple updates. Also, the recent termination of the standard REST API (Which accepted automatic interaction via simple authenticated HTTPS) and enforcement of oAuth usage - Which is a right bar-steward to implement correctly on anything other than PHP - Has thrown back plans to automate my Twitter feed somewhat.
  
  That said, it does come in useful as a quick reference for seeing what my other Twitter-using friends are up to, and for anyone (My profile is public, and posted to as such) who wants to keep abreast with what I'm doing.
  Aside from using Twitter as an open accompaniment to Facebook (When I can be bothered to update both at once, that is! ) I also have a second profile that's intended to be used for automated updates and error reports posted by scripts running on my own websites, which - Once implemented (Should be done around the time HS2 is commissioned! ) - Will save me having to keep a constant eye on my website log files and admin panel!

Incidentally, does anyone else share my annoyance at many sites (Facebook being a serial offender, but a lot of other sites do this too) not allowing people to set their profiles as being publicly viewable, and insted forcing people to register and create a profile...Even if all they want to do is look-up a profile of their friend who has written their profile with the intention of it being fit for open, public display?

 

[Donny Dave]

Twitter infuriates me a lot of the time, as I can never fit what I want to say inside the 140 char limit without having to resort to either using SMS "English", omitting pertinent details, or having to post multiple updates.

There is a way around the 140 character limit

 

[TrainBrain185]

That's not the way it is at all... some of the grads that we see coming through the company I work for have a much better attitude than the more established staff who are the ones who don't make the effort they should do. Plus grads are cheaper in the short/mid term which is what management seem to care about these days.

Horses for Courses then perhaps? Regarding Grads? Well, these days, Provincial City Universities are just a posh word for Technical Colleges. The only Universities that are worthy to be called Universities are the originals like the Oxfords and Cambridges and similar thereof. Students are getting turned out of these so called Universities like cannon fodder each year with very few getting a job that relates to their qualifications, with many so far in debt with Student Loans I could not sleep at night if it were me.
What Grads lose out on is "life experiences", "hands on" experience in the workplace. Grads remain closetted in their own little classroom world and are missing out on vital hands on practical aspects of jobs.
Hence, we believe in experience and working up from the lower rungs. We have found out that "Hindsight is a wonderful thing".

 

[MKB]

I think there’s something seriously amiss when public corporations like the BBC choose to favour some social networking sites – for which read Facebook -- over competing smaller ones. It’s unfair to be giving the market leader an extra competitive advantage. Why they can’t just use their own website, I don’t know. (In fact I do know – it’s because that’s the only way programme producers can bypass the plethora of compliance obstacles that stand in the way of timely updates to the official website.)

In my experience, there's a natural life-cycle to one’s use of social networking sites. One goes through the following phases in turn: novelty, fun, obsessive, infuriating, and finally tedious. For me, it took from 1998 to 2003 to get them out of my system.

These days, I prefer messageboards for subjects that interest me. Like RailUK.

But I learnt a lot during the infuriating phase. With apologies to “normal” people online, the following jaundiced and world-weary opinions have come from that phase:

(1) Contrary to what intuition might lead you to suspect, being verbally attacked in a public forum on the internet is often far more upsetting than being attacked verbally offline.
(2) A lot of people don’t understand (1) and seem incapable of exercising the norms of restraint and consideration that social etiquette would force upon them in offline settings.
(3) The overwhelming majority of internet users do so passively, engaging others mainly on a one-to-one basis. The much smaller pool of heavy posters to public boards includes a disproportionate number of people who like to be self-righteous and judgemental, smugly wallowing in schadenfreude. These people never seem to be offline, and presumably it’s their own empty lives that make them the way they are.
(4) If people posted online only when they had something useful to contribute, 99% of postings would disappear.
(5) Having skim read a thread to pick out the few apparently useful contributions, it can then be tricky discerning genuine information from speculation, ill-informed opinion, gossip and downright misinformation.
(6) As the song in Avenue Q has it, the internet is (mainly) for porn.