Online social networking is with out a doubt one of the newest and most widely used tools in PR and other media outlets. The problem is that facebook has become so large that everyone is getting in on it...including employers. When facebook first came on the scene it was for college students only, then it went to college and high school, now it is open to everyone. So the problem is "How do we separate our personal lives and our professional on facebook?" The social Times published an article " 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know." http://tinyurl.com/c59bzd

The article explores many different ways to separate your friends from your family and your colleagues. The first setting is different friend lists. You can create as many different friend lists as you want and each friend list has it's own privacy settings. This means that you can be friends with your co-workers and bosses but they can only see as much of your profile as you want them to see. Another great thing about these friend lists it that you can send out a message or invitation just to the people on that friend list.  The second setting is to remove yourself from facebook search results. This will enable that no one can see your profile if your not friends with them. The third step is a long the same lines, remove yourself from google. I got lucky and didn't find anything about myself until about 10 pages back. However this is due to the fact that there is a swimwear designer by the same name as well as a famous jazz musician so I'm not really a good example. The fourth point is if you are going to use Facebook as a professional tool avoid being tagged in less than flattering pictures. Now, I'm not talking about a picture where you think you look bad, I'm talking about those party pictures that would be better off not being on the Internet at all. The only problem is you can't control what other people post on facebook but you can control who sees the pictures on facebook. The fifth point goes along with the fourth, make your photo albums private and limit them to those who you want to see them.  Relationship statuses are another good point. if you are in a relationship and it ends do you really want everyone at work to know about it right away? I know that I don't. It is also suggested that you make all of your contact information private. Only let your "Friends" see your phone number and such.  Now for the point the ninth point and the one that I found really helpful, avoid the embarrassing wall posts. I don't know how many times I have had to delete wall posts that my friends have written on my wall because I don't want everyone to read what that person said. Now I won't have that problem because I learned you can control who sees your wall and who can post on it. For instructions on how to do these things on your facebook account just read this article at http://tinyurl.com/c59bzd.