Online Social Lookup: A Study of a Future Employment Tool

Abstract: From the days of Antonio Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell when the telephone was invented, people have been looking for ways to communicate with each other through the use of technology. With the introduction of the Internet new possibilities were created to communicate with other persons around the world. As more and more individuals got access to the Internet more and more data got sent through the network. As with any platform where number of individuals keeps growing, business is to be made. Different companies offer different types of services, and many of these companies are niched in services where people in some way interact with each other. Social communities are some of the largest websites that are used and on these websites a lot of data is being shared. Pictures, life stories and interests are shared and this data is something that advertisement companies pay money to obtain. We can see this since a large part of revenues from social communities come from ad companies. Since these websites save data about individuals one could collect this data to sum up how an individual act online. In this thesis, we wanted to see if there was any interest in collecting this type of data to develop a business model where the data of individuals would be sold to a third party, and how individuals feel about this type data collection. To get an understanding of what type of data that can be collected, different companies that gather data were looked into. To get an understanding if this business model is something wanted recruiters of different IT companies were contacted for interviews. Focus groups and surveys were used to see how individuals close to their college graduation feel about data collection and the business model that is under construction. From the data collected, we saw that recruiters were not interested in a business model that gathered personal data, but rather professional data such as education, projects and other job related facts that can prove what the job applicant have done. And from the public we got the response that data collection of this sort is not something that is desirable. With the data collected we saw that our business model did not fit our targeted audience, but rather that a modified business model aimed on professional data rather than social data is something that could be developed.