Business Writing @ Purdue

Many of you, I know, have accounts on Facebook and recently I've read quite a few articles about how folks are using Facebook. Of particular interest are the articles that discuss Facebook as a business networking tool. Not only are young professionals continuing the networking that they began when using Facebook in college, but many people in older age groups are also joining Facebook. A search on the Business Week website pulls up fifteen pages of content dating back to 2005. You can find the list of articles, sorted by date, here; and this is barely a drop in the bucket compared to all of the articles available in other publications. Just in the past two months I have read, in print publications, several articles concerning Facebook, including: Wired magazine, MIT's Technology Review, and Newsweek. These are just a few examples out of many and the number of articles found published on the web far outnumber these. Quite a few of these concern the negative repurcussions of some Facebook content. For example, the colleges who have used photos on Facebook to locate and then charge underage drinkers, like Brad Davis at Emory or students who are rejected for internships as a result of Facebook content. As business writing is very much concerned with ethos, I'd like for you to consider your Facebook entries in the context of both your present and future.

I have a couple of questions that I'd like the class to respond to. Many of you have commented in your reading responses that the readings helped you determine site credibility and I think that sharing some specifics will be helpful: How did these readings help you specifically in choosing sources for your white paper? Were there sites that you found that you ended up discarding because they didn't meet credibility requirements? Could you provide some examples?