Part 1:

Can Facebook Get You Fired?
25% of people surveyed had heard of a coworker being disciplined for social media comments.  I too have worked for a company where employees were punished for even “liking” a negative status about the company on Facebook.  This is becoming more of an issue as people are over sharing information to the public and not thinking about the consequences of typing a few silly words about how they feel.  In the case of employees I know being punished they were all given a final warning write up for insubordination all based on here say of another employee sharing with their manager that negative comments were floating around the social site. 
The article has several key points to recognize to keep the personal space of Facebook from mixing with professional workplace issues, which are: think before you post, be picky about who you friend, do it on your own time and computer, watch what you post at home, keep the dialogue positive, figure out privacy settings, and learn your employee rights.  In this class it has been stressed to make sure we fully understand out privacy settings for each type of social media outlet we are exploring the use of and setting them to a level that would allow us to keep a professional relationship with our peers and teacher.  Another related article (Privacy of Information) recommended to read was about how “cookies” are getting smarter and more intrusive to online surfers.  This can pose a huge problem for employees who may be using their work computers to do a quick search online or have a laptop given to them from work that they also use for personal searches.  The article explains that tracking technology is getting smarter and more intrusive. Monitoring used to be limited mainly to "cookie" files that record websites people visit. But the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. Some tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users try to delete them.  Then bought and sold information is used to target that specific person’s interests.  The tracking software is often embedded in other files so it becomes blended with files that are necessary to operate the search engine.  The article noted MSN. com as one of the most intrusive search engines.  They created a company, Targus Information Corp, to record and track detailed information describing specific peoples’ demographic information.  Other free websites that offer a service, like dictionary.com, feel entitled to track information from visitors because they are not paying to use the site.  If this information is collected and sold, it essentially can be bought by human resources departments that are evaluating potential hires and may show up on a background check eventually.  A one time search for something that could be considered a red flag to a potential or current employer may come around to ruin an employee just from the information being so carefully tracked.


Part 2:

    A current problem in Public Affairs that needs to be addressed is the incentives for giving (to the nonprofit sector).  As the economy slipped, Americans have become more frugal with their money and held onto savings instead of giving back to organizations working to help to provide services to those in need.  Now with the looming tax changes lowering the amount that can be deducted on income taxes and the increase in the number of nonprofit organizations competing for donations, incentives to give are becoming a critical issue for strategic planning in order to create long term sustainability.
    Nonprofits use several tactics to try and create incentives to give.  Many focus on the tax exemption, give stewardship rewards, and/or memorialize large donors through name dedications (on buildings, halls, bricks, etc.).  Tax exemption is very appealing to donors in a mid-salary range because it is beneficial for lowering their tax bracket and will usually allow them to donate more to a nonprofit just by being educated on the benefits.  Stewardship rewards are a great marketing strategy to incentivize donors.  Cause related marketing, where a person purchases an item and part of the proceeds are donated, has been an up and coming trendy strategy to promote media attention to organizations and receive donations.  Any time someone receives a tangible incentive from a donation she is likely to build and retain a positive relationship with that organization and may continue to donate.  The previous two incentives to give are geared towards smaller gifts, but dedications are incentives for major gift donors.  People who are willing to give a large gift to an organization are often rewarded by having their name associated with a building or placed on a plaque honoring their large donation for everyone to see.  This is typically a status incentive amongst high profile community members.
    Recommender systems can help solve some of the issues with incentives to donate for nonprofit organizations.  Recommender systems allow interaction from advertisers with potential clients amongst people who have searched for a product or service related to other products and services.  These systems can broaden a searcher’s knowledge to other products or services they may not have previously known about that can either further help them or can be a replacement for what they were originally looking for.  According to Lessig, there are four constraints that affect a person’s behavior, the law, social norms, the market, and the architecture/design of the issue.  Recommender systems can address all of these constraints for incentives to giving.  Legally, donors can be exposed to other opportunities if their privacy settings enable their information to be shared, so the rate of exposure to other organizations related to those they are giving to can be increased and therefore allow donors to access more possibilities to donate.  Recommender systems can also increase attention to smaller organizations in a positive aspect so that it because more socially accepting to support these smaller organizations that may otherwise have gone unnoticed and underfunded.  Addressing the market for incentives to donate is a difficult issue for increasing incentives to donate.  By using recommender systems, there will be a flood of knowledge of other organizations to donors that they were unaware of previously, which can end up spreading their donations thinner amongst more organizations or frustrating them and adversely causing them not to donate at all for fear of choosing the wrong organization.  Over time, I think that this will actually allow organizations to enter into strategic mergers to lower competition for donor resources and/or eliminate organizations that are not structured to be sustainable.  Either of these will help decrease market failure for donations and in the end be beneficial to the donors and the organizations.  The constraint of the design of the issue can be alleviated by recommender systems as well because the issue is in education of how the donations are handled that affects incentives to donate.  By offering comparable organizations and information, the donor becomes more educated and can make more informed decisions, therefore their incentive to donate is sheer belief in the cause they are supporting.  Recommender systems can obviously be a beneficial tool to incorporate into strategic planning for nonprofit organizations to increase donor incentives.