When the private becomes public

In Dominican Republic there are more than 2.5 million account in Facebook (FB). We know that there is duplication of accounts, but the figure puts us in the seventh place in Latin America with a penetration of the 25.99% of the population and the place number 54 worldwide (among 200 countries).

, According to Socialbakers.com, site that records statistics for several social networks, this means that the 85.11% of those who have Internet in the country are part of this network. "The total number of users grew more than 248,660 in the past six months", he expresses this site. I.e. more than 4%.

The growth of this network in the last month is located at 6.13%. This would accommodate a number of Dominicans and Dominican who have accounts in other networks such as Linkdln or Twitter, less penetration.

Penetration of Dominicans in FB beat countries like Brazil (18.85 per cent); Guatemala (13.32%); El Salvador (21.02%); Honduras (13.50%) and u000aNicaragua (11.21%), to mention just a few. We exceeded greatly, as expected, to Haiti, whose penetration barely reaches the 3.39% of the population. We are below Costa Rica (36.51%) in the region, and Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Puerto Rico. Therefore, Dominican ranks number eight if we take into account to Central America and South America.

From the demographic point of view, we have to point out that the FB user population is essentially young. 71% Have less than 34 years (35% with age of 18 - 24 years, i.e. almost 900 thousand users). The population over 55 years barely reaches 2%. With regard to gender, the distribution is 50% male and 50% female.

Yours is not secret
is a network of social contacts, but is a network in which those involved have "decided" to make public private and, therefore, economic, political and social actors are u000apossibility of using the information provided "voluntarily" by fans of this network.

One of the inputs offered by FB is the user profile. Is basic information, which not everyone full: where and in condition, in what works, philosophy, art and entertainment, books, activities and interests, basic information (sex, phone, address, email, website if you).

However, such information can be enlarged with the interventions of the users, their interactions or, in some cases, their "releases".

This allows those who are able to perform analysis of the discourses and minidiscursos as well as analysts of human resources, who can complete this "profile" and establish trends in consumption, ideas, motivations, attitudes, religious and political preferences, sexual orientation, among other information which can be or not relevant for decision-making of u000adecisions.

A utility: take into account the resulting profile analysis to choose a candidate to a particular job. Sensitive issue for companies insofar as they might tend to discriminate for reasons for which there should be discrimination in employment, such as sexual orientation, religion, política… themes that thrill and divide human beings (and Dominicans are not the exception).

Other topics that can be observed and even have relevance to certain posts, such as: family environment, the circle of friends, tastes and preferences, extracurricular activities and comments, and establish whether there is adequacy between the candidate and the claims of the company.

Voice of expert
for Ingrid Martínez, President of Unique Management Solutions, asked about the use of Facebook for the establishment of a profile to be used for the purpose of employment contracts, stated that it was u000alittle scientific subjective and probably tendenciado by analyst options. Considers that it should worry about if this becomes a significant tool and leads to discrimination (which must always take care so that it is not criterion of decision).

"Personal or even relations elements can affect the good judgment." "Any element used has to be done with tweezers, very carefully, not to affect reputations and damage people racing".

The risk is to use a source of information as a decisive tool and without having it, give it character of scientist. Should also be assumed that, if you use it, is a complementary information and not the only nor generally the main.

Patricia Cuevas, President of the Dominican Association of administrators of human resources (Adoarh), is another approach. For caves, Facebook is a cutting-edge management tool u000ahuman, enabling and accelerating the process of communication, learn skills and hobbies of the candidates, as well as information not always appearing in the face-to-face interview.

"Is on Facebook where we know those social and practical skills of the candidates and their behaviour off stage, which shows the consistency of their actions with professional profile that sells," declares.

Says, however, that at present it is not political and institutional access to Facebook. Some firms consulting FB and others do not.

"If I ask in the future, I say that in a short time we could consider political using FB as validator behavioral and/or other emerging social networks," concludes.

(Consultado:_www.socialbakers.
)(com).
Pareto Consulting Group

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