Remember Tom from MySpace?

Remember Tom from MySpace? He’s now living every hipster dream that hipsters dream about. He has his own blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and he even has his own line of products. Best of all, he’s doing it all with his face covered. He doesn’t have to worry about people looking at his face like a wart on badly peeled skin.

This guy’s life has changed for the better because he went “out to play.” The old-school social networking scene featured memberships in social networks where you got invited to parties and where your influence was only as good as the size of your wallet. Tom decided he wasn’t going to be a part of that type of nonsense and he signed up for every one of those social networking sites. Today he’s become a multimillionaire to social networking and the Internet. How he did it is worth exploring.

First, he started with Facebook. He didn’t create his own page – his friends’ pages were set up for him. Tom was happy to take a chance on this new social networking trend. After all, he had friends in common with quite a few of them so he felt like he had something to contribute. Some of those friends were even familiar with him.

Tom made a bunch of friends on Facebook and spent hours talking on the phone. It was a lot of fun but he quickly learned that he didn’t know anyone by his real name. So he started using the user name “Just Billy” and then “just billy.”

Eventually, he created a page for his real name and started getting lots of traffic. And lots of people were interested in him. He even began to get the attention of the media!

So what happened next? Did Tom get his groove back on Facebook and Twitter and attract a new group of friends? Not quite – his profile photos were scattered all over his page and his comments were deleted by the thousands.

His wife found out about his “past” on Facebook and they were not happy. He even got a divorce. Was he sorry? No – he wasn’t.

So Tom decided to give social networking a try one more time. This time, he created a page for his wife. They had matching profiles and it was a breath of fresh air for Tom. He met some new people, reconnected with old friends, and even got some positive feedback from one of his “old” friends. Tom had learned his lesson.

But then came another round of bad news. His ex-wife claimed that he had cheated on her. Wow. How does one get to cheat and then run around the bend and confess? Tom was really in trouble now.

So how did Tom recover from this? Well, first off, he admitted his mistakes and then he moved on. The second thing that Tom did was to change his personal information on his profile and start using a different name. The change was subtle but noticeable. Tom had gone from allele to Albert Einstein, just by changing one detail.

Ok, so what did Tom do to keep his profile updated? Well, the key is to avoid making the same mistakes. Remember – people love to brag when they have something that others want. Think about it – what do you remember most about your best friends? What do you remember about your worst enemies?

If you can’t remember anything negative about them, chances are you also can’t remember anything negative about your social networking site(s). Keep your profile as clean as possible. Make sure that your information is accurate and try to make it as genuine as possible.

Do your best to interact with other members of your network. Just because you don’t speak to each other every day, it doesn’t mean that you can’t develop meaningful relationships. It is also important that you don’t turn the other members away because you don’t feel that they will like you. Remember that you should be able to mix with anyone.