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Does Facebook not seek to encapsulate all aspects of members' lifestyle? I believe it does. There's even a section members can fill in to say what they do for a living. I also believe that people's jobs are hugely important elements of the overall lifestyle? So, it's not therefore as intrusive as Sapna suggests I believe....

Thanks for your comments. I agree, social networks do provide insight on prospective employee candidates but where do we draw the line in privacy? Maybe CV's might become insignificant in the future if we are providing so much information about ourselves on social networks. The imbalance of work and life is increasingly growing in this day and age.

I've heard several stories recently about companies checking candidates profiles online before employing them and also people being turned down for jobs because of the items posted on their profile.

I think it's just a natural progression for social networking sites to be used in this way. Granted its perhaps not in the original "spirit" of social networking but if people think their data and infomation won't be used or scrutinised in this way then in my opinion they are being a bit naive.

As an employer myself I'd have no problem using Facebook to give me some background information on a potential candidate. Recruiting and training new staff is a long and costly procedure and small businesses can't afford to get it wrong. CVs will only ever tell you so much about a person (and lets face it, everyone bends the truth slightly on their CV) so getting so extra insight on a candidate could be invaluable.

However, I do agree to a certain extent that work and personal life should be kept seperate but equally if there are elements of your private life that you'd really rather your employer not know about, then it's probably a good idea not to post them on Facebook!

Hi, thanks for your comments. Your views are not surprising, many of my friends and family feel the same way. For me some ads are actually quite useful, I'm planning my wedding at the moment so some of them are actually of interest, however, there are others which are really quite annoying!

I also think the set up of of Facebook Pages for organisations is a great way for them to connect with people online and chat. The difference is people have the choice to join these groups.

I think its disgusting that companies are starting to use Facebook in this way; is nothing private anymore? For Gods sake just let us have some time out! I've sure as hell got my profile on private; I don't want my employer - or any future one - judging me on my personal life, which is and always will be completely seperate from my professional one! And more than that, I honestly don't care about joining a group created by, say, a retailer in an effort to gain some free marketing - I see adverts everywhere, all the time, it'd be nice to log on and see what my friends are up to without be bombarded by even more of the stuff!

Saying that, my company have a MySpace page dedicated to one of our products which I run, so I suppose I'm just as bad as the rest of them.