I'm pretty passionate about Facebook and other social networking sites. I love them -- and hate them. I love them because they make college campuses and other environments smaller by helping people find other people who share common interests. I hate them because they're so easy to misuse.

One of the dangers of Facebook for employees and job seekers is that employers are starting to use Facebook as part of their background checking process. Many students mistakenly believe that the only people who can or will access their Facebook profiles are other students. Those naive students will post naked photos of themselves, stories of sexual exploits, and write about getting drunk, stoned, or otherwise trashed. Sometimes those stories are true and sometimes they're not. If they're true, employers are less likely to want to hire those students because of concerns that their lifestyle and lack of judgment will spill over into the workplace. It has happened before with people named Bill. If the stories are not true, then employers are still not going to want to hire the student because posting that type of information in a public place is proof of your lack of judgment, even if the story isn't true.

One of the missing links in all of this has been finding students who have not been hired as a result of their Facebook postings or fired as a result of their Facebook postings. Well, there's now a poster child. C.M. Russell just wrote in his blog that the founder of social networking site Ziggs fired his intern after reading on the intern's Facebook page that the intern gets paid for "screwing around on IM" and "talking to [his] friends and getting paid for it." The irony is delicious.