Facebook, Jon Favreau and Your Career

Jon Favreau is 27 and he just landed a plum job as Barack Obama’s speechwriter. Actually he’s been writing for Obama for years now, but head speechwriter at the White House? That’s some gig for a 27 year-old.

But Jon has also become the latest example of how social media is changing all our lives – especially for those young enough to view the web just like we 40+ folks used to view our diaries.

It all went wrong with this photo, presumably taken during the primaries, which Jon posted on his Facebook page. He took it down minutes after the news media discovered it, but too late! As CNN said:

The picture was reportedly up for a scant two hours or so before Favreau removed it, along with every other picture of himself beyond his profile photo — but there’s no getting the Facebook genie back in the bottle.

Fortunately, Hillary Clinton seems to have taken the incident with good humor and Obama is not going to fire his new speechwriter over this, but will you be so lucky if you do the same thing? Remember, everything you do and everything you say online is visible to everyone – quite possibly forever. Write that on a post-it and stick it on your monitor!