Black Friday 2013

A few months ago, my personal Twitter account was inadvertently linked to my LinkedIn Professional account by accident.   At the time I started writing about it and posting about it and got very pissed off about it.  Even though it was my own fault, even though it would take the Average Joe a few hours of manual searching and analyzing, I was still freaked out that the link was there. The outing came on the heels of an especially bad Hack Attack that managed to get to my Checking Account. 

This brought me to the realization that all the warnings and advice about “if it’s online it’s public” pedantically streaming through LinkedIn, would never fix my problem. My web footprint is vast. I first entered the Net, in a meaningful sense, in 1998. But that’s not the problem. I have data going back to 1994-96 in the Dark Web.  It is accessible; I’ve seen it in the search strings, which means someone somewhere clicked on it at one point in time.  Again, some Anonymous Analyst with a little bit of time and a modicum of determination only needs validation that the connected accounts are real.

I spent the last few months really considering how to combat this dilemma and then the Fake LinkedIn Job appeared.

I decided to prove how fake the job was and how ridiculous Monster, Career Builder and LinkedIn have become in regards to Fake Profiles and Fake Names. I followed through with the Process and watched every person involved stumble all over themselves. However, I did use it to my advantage to Baseline the activity as of October 2013.

As of Black Friday 2013 I have officially broken my Social Media.  By “broken” I mean that just because you see a post from me, it doesn’t necessarily track back to my exact location.  There will always be GPS tracking because I need my Maps and Phone, but as far as that, there’s no guarantee that the email or the phone tracks back to my current location.  I guess its just part of the plan for my Launch.

I turned off my Social Media earlier this year – around April 2013. No Twitter, minimal Google+ and stripped my Facebook to about 50 people I know personally, most of them related. Now that I have further broken the Facebook and Google accounts with the phones, I will have a hard, documentable Baseline Date for any Social Media Campaign I want to follow.

As of November 1, the past few weeks have seen the closure and deletion of my Profiles and Resumes on Monster.com and Career Builder. I deleted the Dice.com Profile about a year ago.  I will be closing CareerLadder.com and any other Career site I can find between today and Sunday December 1^st.

As of January 2014 – or somewhere there about – I will be a free agent. I will not have association with any Corporation, meaning I should be unemployed and available for the next Contract.  I am supposed to be warm, inviting, professional and friendly.  But I will be completely unbound by all of my Non Disclosures. Really an interesting time – because I have just been approached by several people on LinkedIn who are urging me to publish my work. I don’t get to show off my work all that much because of the NDA’s and now I can.

Why now?

Well, a few reasons.  Primarily it was a recent comment on my blog by a “Social Media Expert” questioning my use of SEO on my Endometriosis & Me blog. I realize this happened because I recently shared the Blog on my Google Plus Stream. Then, on Thanksgiving, yesterday, and continuing through today, I can receive data on my new phone but I can not send.  I realized the accounts were broken right along with the Social Media and Opportunity struck. The ability to re-launch with good content that I care about makes for an excellent opportunity to show off my Social Media Skills.

The SEO on my Blogs is done intentionally. I do not want a broad Audience and I realized in 2011 that no matter what I do, in just a few short weeks the data is spread far and wide. Tangible reasons, the one’s that have a pure purpose and feed the response to the Challenger on my Endometriosis & Me Blog, for “Why Now” are:

First, an interesting thing happened when I had to replace my broken Samsung GS3 for the 3^rd time. These phones do not bode well for the clumsy. When I rebooted the new phone, the data stream through Facebook and Google were referencing keywords specific to me between 1998-2001. It should have been impossible in 2013 for that to happen.  I realized that somewhere in a Database, the data was being cross-referenced to other Servers – “checking in”. That meant that somewhere in the world, Google and/or Facebook had found a server that held 15 year old data. Then weird things began to happen – things that should not have been related began appearing in my data stream and that led to other real world strangeness.

Second, the LinkedIn Influencer Posts and Articles regarding Fake Linked In Jobs has real world relevance for me.  I recently had an experience with what I believe to be a Fake LinkedIn Job or at the very least a hi-jacking of a legitimate job. I also have content related to how the Fake Jobs are used to feed the Applicant or Candidate Tracking Databases shared across the various Recruiting Corporations.

Third, since the discussion about Health Care began I have been eagerly awaiting the Implementation of the #ACA. In fact, I have been extraordinarily patient with the Implementation of the HealthCare.gov and the Insurance Mandate, waiting to see just how bad this #ACA has turned on me. I don’t think this was intentional. I think that the Insurance Industry and their “HR Machine” have effectively labeled those with Pre Existing Conditions as hysterical angry Patients with a Grudge. I think everyone has been blind sided by the reach of the Insurance Industry, just like they were blind sided by the reach of the Banking Industry. I am taking this opportunity to re-launch my Endometriosis Blog because of the impact the #ACA has on the treatment we need.

As of January 2014, I will have spent a full 7 years hiding my Illness because Cancer freaks people out. Businesses don’t like Employees who make a fuss. Politics absolutely hate a woman who stands up for herself, especially to a Doctor, the Sacred of all Sacreds.  Three years ago I began exploring the Endometriosis Monster again because I felt something coming on, and what I found was ridiculous. I have since begun a new exploration with the #ACA and I can’t find anywhere in the Exchange how I would Financially survive Treatment. I am not the only woman experiencing this dilemma and with the number of women currently being diagnosed at Stage 4 or worse, it’s time to bring the issue to a Head.

Why announce this on LinkedIn? Because when I reached out for assistance, instead of receiving a phone call or reply email, I got instead a LinkedIn Profile drive-by from an Executive and a Project Manager at Health Net.  Not really appropriate.

I have a minimum of 3 Broad Topics with which to begin Social Media discussion and activity.  The Baseline Date of December 1 provides for excellent Tracking. For every share like or link, the representation is 1 Sales Lead.

Converted to 1 Engagement.

Converted to 1 Sale.

That’s of the traffic that I can see. However, what I want to do is re-create the experiment I conducted for fun back in January 2011. With less than 200 Followers I created a huge Twitter and Facebook presence.  If the data really is that good, then I should be able to do this again with a larger Footprint.  The only expense I will incur during this 2014 Experiment will be my own time.  I am leveraging existing resources for Equipment.

This little post is to let everyone know, that this is My Black Friday 2013.

On December 2, 2013, I will begin to re-connect all of the Devices, Accounts and Blogs under one Umbrella which can easily be tracked, to capture the amount of activity.

I will be using the Motorola MotoX and the iPhone5s for cell phone service and data on Verizon Wireless.  I will also have a Motorola Xoom Tablet on a Verizon Wireless data plan.

My Internet Connection (data) will probably be random so I won’t even try to track that except for my own purposes.

If I am going to be forced to write code again for a living, then I will do so on my terms. The Internet was my Hobby – the place I dove into for fun and escape. It quickly became over run with my real life and my work so much so that it is hard to pull the 2 apart. I tried to warn everyone, there was a reason Daddy took the Speak N’ Spell away. Don’t tempt me to use my Talent for Evil.