The challenge seems like a fun way to instill a sense of camaraderie among coworkers, as they face a rival team to secure honor and bragging rights. However, the fun came to an end when the legal and PR reps from Facebook refused to allow their employees to participate. I suppose it's understandable that having all of your employees get drunk while playing a frat game can evoke may horrific visions of PR backlash or DUIs, but at what cost? I've seen numerous articles appear recently that suggest that Generation Y, the younger generation on the brink of joining the workforce, values fun in a workplace. This is a generation that refuses to believe that work should define you, and should instead be a fun environment to earn enough money to do fun activities in their time off. To be a company based on a website that was initially only open to young people still in school, it would seem that refusing to allow a fun group activity is not the way to gain points with a large part of your target market.

Companies now more than ever must evaluate their image and decide if they want to market the "fun environment" or the "traditional environment". Time will tell if the word corporate will change to encompass a more laid-back atmosphere, but I can tell you that I personally prefer the former. I'm admittedly not much of a beer drinker, but it's great when you can create a team environment where your employees truly enjoy coming to work and collaborating with their coworkers. These types of bonds can often be strengthened by activities such as the forbidden beer pong. The answer doesn't have to be drinking based, but if the employees are excited at the prospect of battling another company (not unlike the company sponsored softball teams of yore), then perhaps the PR reps should more carefully weigh the risk vs. benefits. Your employees might not be driving while intoxicated now (which is of course always a good thing!), but the news that your company frowns on fun is now making the rounds all over the internet, and might be taken into consideration by people who might want to use your product or apply for a job in your company.

Facebook is still a great way to connect and share information. Not only does your profile inherently have a high "trust" rating in Google, but it can also serve as a highly custom landing page for you or your company. Here are a few tips to keep your profile professional and up to date without ever touching it. The hardest part of this process is keeping it personal enough to share your interests while keeping it interesting to the people that do not know you.

1. Have means to contact you easily accessible on the top. Out of Instant Messaging, Phone or Email or website URLs you should provide at least one. Listing multiple ways to contact you is obviously the best. The websites you list will be getting very tasty Facebook flavored link juice, which always helps. At the same time, do not use it purely for your corporate contacts, keep in mind that facebook is for connecting outside work, so listing interests and personal you-and-your-dog websites is very much encouraged.

2. Use apps that link into your other social profiles. Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google Shared Feeds and even just rss blog feed all can be integrated without being too spammy, and will always keep the content on your page fresh and current. Most of the apps I linked for your convenience, to import your rss feed, just go to the official Notes application and click on "import your own blog" link at the bottom. If you do a lot of stumbling, tagging through delicious or sharing items in google reader make sure to disable them from updating mini feed otherwise they will overwhelm it and your friends would probably not be very happy with you.

3. Finally, use Facebook for its intended purpose. There are plenty of ways to deal with the never ending stream of "Just for Fun" app spam, and one of them is just to power through. Organize events, be active in groups, constantly be on lookout for people you know, and stay in touch with your current friends. You never know when or who will bring you a new client or provide a new business opportunity.

While there can be advantages to outsourcing your online persona in this manner, there can be possible disadvantages as well. As someone creating an online presence, you should be sure that you understand what you want to use your personal site for (if indeed you even choose to have one amid the sea of social networking sites). Social sites often let you create a profile where you provide links to personal sites--these can help drive traffic to your personal page. Likewise, providing links to these social sites on your personal page can drive traffic to these external representations of you.

Ultimately, these two types of sites--personal and social--can balance each other out and drive more traffic and attention to you than you might otherwise have experienced if you were to forgo one of the options. However, the more you outsource, the more potential for less traffic to your personal site, and if this is where you house the most important content, you might see smaller readership.

You might also want to consider the implications of giving up direct control of the hosting of your content and what it means if these external sites were to change their policies or suffer a major outage. The more sites you sign up for, the more you have to keep up with in terms of updating, which might be cumbersome depending on how many social sites you use.

A reader in the comments of this blog entry did make a good point though in stating that giving out a personal URL somehow doesn't have the same weight that it used to. In a time where virtually everyone has their own Myspace or Facebook account, people want like to respond with like. For the average person, these social sites are sufficient--there is no need to bother with HTML and creating a custom site. It's also that much more effort to remember a personal URL than it is to know that you can look someone up later on Facebook and friend them.

Is there a need for an average person to have a personal site anymore, or is it completely redundant when the info can be found on multiple social networking sites? Should one keep all content in-house, or outsource it to other sites such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Youtube, etc.? I for one have not formulated a definite answer to these questions, but I would love to hear any opinions on the matter!

While people with more common names will have a harder time ranking for your own name as the first result, the tips below are helpful to everyone. First and foremost it is important to not be afraid to use your name on social websites. As Gary Vaynerchuk pointed out, your legacy, which starts with the name, is more important than money (currency) you currently make. You are your own brand in Social Media and New Media Marketing, so to rank high for your name on search engines you must not be afraid to use your name.

There is 2 main ways to get this accomplished. First goal is to get your profile and your name on as many high trust sites as possible, here is a list of must-haves:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pownce
• Flickr
• Digg

The big thing about these sites is they all allow you to link 1 or more sites, Pownce, Digg and LinkedIn being the best about cross linking your websites.

Second way to get the site ranked for your name is to simply comment on blog posts you find interesting. Best way to provide an insightful comment is to ask a question related to the post to initiate conversation. Check our our tutorial on how to post a blog comment. If you have troubles finding interesting blog posts, I suggest you check out reddit, digg or stumbleUpon, across those 3 sites, you have unlimited amount of fresh interesting content to read and ultimately comment on.

Keeping those 2 tips in mind, you should have no problem getting even the toughest names ranked well on search engines. If you have any other suggestions, please let us know in the comments. We would love to hear how those tips help you rank well for your own name.

My favorite recent story that I came across was on Wired.com. There I found an article about "Canada's dumbest car thief." This individual took a tricked-out car for a test drive, only to never return. The owner of the dealership, an internet-savvy 20-something, went straight to the automotive discussion forum Beyond.ca and posted a description of the vehicle and the suspect.

What started as a mere post on a forum branched out and used many other online tools such as Facebook and Google Maps to discover the suspect's name, address, and other personally identifying information. Since the thief kept the car parked in front of his own house, the dealership owner knew exactly where to send police, and made sure to be there to tape the arrest and post it on YouTube--a fitting online ending to a crime solved thanks to the Internet.

While the Internet is a tool often used for entertainment or research, it also offers means to track down criminals for crimes that occurred offline. The resolution of these two different cases is just so cool that it shows how much the Internet has to offer when its powers are used for good!

At the risk of being smacked down again, another topic of interest (soon to be a week old, Stepan), is the Danny Sullivan interview with SEOmoz about Facebook marketing. It even inspired me to setup a facebook business page for Room 214. Say I'm late to the party with this as one who runs a search marketing agency, but hey, until I see the money for our clients - it's ALL in beta.

How cool it is to go through the process of setting up a pay per click advertising campaign in Facebook. I have 18 million people from which to target! My selections included people who are over 30, have a college degree, are interested in marketing and blogging, and work at Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and a few others. Uh-oh, with these parameters, facebook tells me I'm targeting 20 people.

I think "ouch" - then go to submit my credit card info in the name of bleeding edge marketing. What, you won't accept my AMEX company card? Bye for now Facebook.

Case in point: my 10 year high school reunion was set to happen this year. I was actually looking forward to attending--seeing what my fellow classmates have been up to, who is already successful, and who is still trying to find their way, that sort of thing. The reunion was set to happen earlier this month, but the event was cancelled at the end of October. The reason? The reunion company hired was unable to locate enough classmates.

I was not on the committee, but the organization of the reunion did not appear to have been handled in the best manner. A page just for the reunion was created on Myspace, and many of my classmates friended the profile, but this page was not really used to post or disseminate information. In fact, when the reunion was cancelled, it took weeks for them to post a list of "missing" classmates. When the list was finally posted, at least 1/4 of the people on this list were not only on Myspace, but also a friend of the reunion profile! How can these people be missing when they clearly have a way to be contacted, and have an interest in the reunion if they were a friend of the reunion profile? Just by simply typing in the classmate's name into Myspace, several of the "missing" people could have been found. In the case of those who friended the reunion profile, posting a message asking for contact info might have helped. Why was the list not posted earlier? People cannot provide information if they do not know it is needed--keeping people informed and up-to-date is key in planning events, and with all the bulletin and event features on these networking sites, there is no reason why people couldn't have been kept in the loop.

It just seemed like the committee and reunion company were waiting for the information to come to them, instead of using resources such as Classmates.com, Facebook, and Myspace. No reunion group was set up in Facebook that I was aware of, thus not taking advantage of this popular site either. While Facebook does not turn up as many graduates for my year as Myspace, there are still a few people on there who cannot be found on Myspace.

Adding to the frustration is the fact that, a few days ago, the Myspace profile was deleted, thus increasing the misutilization of this web tool. In the event that the committee tries to plan an 11 year reunion, they will have to try even harder to reach out to the class, since I doubt most people will be motivated now to actively seek out more information.

With the power of the internet allowing people to find information and locate lost friends more easily than ever, it seemed to me that something like a reunion should be a piece of cake to organize. Sadly, this was not the case, and now my class will probably not have one at all. It makes me wonder how on earth these events took place back in the days before technology--perhaps it is a sign that the traditional non-electronic methods are still effective. In reality though, the committee and/or company was probably hoping that everyone would somehow know where to submit their contact info and that there would be no need to search for anyone. While that certainly could have happened, the lack of announcements or notifications alerting people where they could find reunion details or submit their information made it nearly impossible for the "lost" people to be "found"--even those who were never truly lost to begin with.