My wife's job makes it necessary for her to keep track of hiring trends and legal issues related to employees and social media. There are services who's only product is mining social media for the HR industry. When you have 100 resumes for a single position, it's a good way to eliminate half without having to read their resume or interact with them. Today it's easier to admit an arrest record and explain it in an interview than never getting a chance to defend the poor judgment fool you act in social media. First impressions are everything even if you don't know who's watching. And it's no longer large corporations taking advantage of these services.
And if you tell people at one social media spot where you use your real name that you are captxyz at game "kill all squirrels". If that game has an open forum to the public. That's one more social media link to follow for research. And you will never get the chance to explain away things with "just fooling around" or "just kidding".
For the perspective employer it gives them an insight to your self control when you think no one is looking.
This is quite true...and I have a bit of experience with this. Social Media in all it's forms can be a very powerful tool in the right or wrong hands.
Kinda off topic, but if you want to see some stuff that might change how you view Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc then Google "Social Zombies". Look for the videos from the ShmooCom and Black Hat Information Security conferences and watch them. And yes, all the things they post are real capabilities that can (and are) used by hackers to make use of social media.
