John S. Rajeski, Ed.D.

No, and here are some of the reasons why. Pre-Facebook, and before the advent of MySpace people began to register a personal URL. Concurrent to Facebook’s early General Public availability another option arose (known as LinkedIn). Then, as a Silicon Valley Executive (already having a my own URL), as an early LinkedIn user… it was a really beneficial medium for conducting business until around the time LinkedIn (LI) Answers began paralleling ‘Likes’ on Facebook, i.e., people seemingly posting responses to generate higher rankings versus freely sharing their expertise, etc. Furthermore, LI users also began repurposing LinkedIn Answers and re-posting them on external websites (this happened to me countless times) without the writer’s expressed consent/permission. Finally, around the time LinkedIn Answers was suspended, pursuing advanced degrees (when people find out who their friends actually are), the adage of having five close contacts versus 5,000 was the underlying orientation. The aforementioned factors coupled with the evolving reports over the past year or so of data being weaponized for nefarious purposes reinforces my suspicion of Social Networking. For the nay-sayers, I also understand LinkedIn has many positive impacts and hope as time advances better parameters can evolve ensuring end-users’ protection and data control/integrity… amongst other beneficial factors… For this author, it was the correct decision to never sign-up for Facebook then as it still is now…