The Original Sin

In my research for a group assignment. I have been visiting various job-networking-career sites that I have been invited to in the past few months and to see what they are all about. One of the main ways sites like LinkedIn and Notchup get the word out is by viral marketing . Most of us are familiar with this from sites such as Facebook that ask you to import your contact list from your email in order to connect to everyone that is already on Facebook. Facebook and Linked and most others will ask you to import your contacts, and then present you with a page listing all your contacts that are on the site already. You have another page that has the one that are not on it and it asks you if you want to invite them. I am a big believer in this kind of marketing and always follow the first steps in connecting to my friends. But I never follow the second step that asks me to send emails to everyone I have ever emailed from my Gmail. I tend to make fun of those poor souls who do not realize that the "select all friends" is checked off or the exact meaning of this second page of folk that are not using the service yet. However, Doostang has managed to trick me into sinning in the same manner, and did so in quite a sophisticated way. It first presented me with a page that asked me to invite the "friends on Doostang" (see pic 1)

I assumed that I wanted to connect with all these folk, since it is a career site and not a Facebook, and the larger your network is the better. But when a second page with the list of folk not on Doostang did not appear I became a bit worried. And after my girlfriend replied to my email asking me what this site was all about, I knew the Doostang had beaten me with a very evil trick. I sinned with the sin of our generation, the first, original, and most primal sin we do in the age of 90+ emails a day and websites that take over your life. The sin of NOT SCROLLING DOWN!!!! If I can give my future kids one piece of sound advice to lead them through life it would be to ALWAYS SCROLL DOWN!

As you can see if I would have scrolled down the list, I would have seen that the list is split into another part with the names of every single person I have emailed in the last 3 or 4 years of having Gmail (See pic). "friends not on Doostang" is such an non conspicuous line. But the fact that I just send an email to all my professors, deans, admins, doctors, friends, foes, ex's, past employers, interviewers of jobs I got and did not get, job fair employers, and every random person I have ever been in contact with makes me want to change my name and move to Idaho (no offense people I have emailed from Idaho). Sadly, I cannot do that, at least not yet. Instead I will take this public opportunity to apologize if you have received an invitation from me to join my network on Poop-stang. My only advice is don’t make the same mistake I did, learn to ALWAYS scroll down.

Akiva