Yet another scam is making its way around Facebook. This time it comes in the group, “Join For A FREE $25 itunes Gift Card!”

Here are 10 reasons why this group is a scam:

• The description says, “My Business is Conducting a Social Experiment” but there’s no business name anywhere. Tell me what kind of company would spend outrageous amounts of money giving everyone gift cards without even having their company name listed anywhere?
• There are no admins in the group. No one willing to put a face to the scam.
• They encourage you to invite all of your friends to join the group. They admonish you that this is the most important step, because your inviting of your friends is, “how they give away the gift cards.”
• They confuse you by asking you to paste a line of Javascript code into the address bar. This merely selects all the friends in your friends list, but adds a certain magical, technological feel to the whole thing. They’re preying on the technologically unsavvy.
• They describe the selecting of your friends in innocent terms, saying your friends in the box will turn blue. That’s a fancy way of saying the code you pasted into your browser spoofed a clicked on them.
• After you’ve invited all your friends, the group then directs you to an unbranded website that takes down your personal information (http://zaggy.info/itunes.html).
• This unbranded website is really cheaply done (programmed in PHP with no data validation). Just click “Submit” without filling out anything, and the program doesn’t even know. This is a red flag that no real programmer did this, but merely a fly-by-night hacker intent on collecting your personal information.
• After you submit the form, you are once again admonished that if you didn’t complete all the steps in the process, you will be disqualified. Too bad there is no logical way for them to connect your submission on this website to your actual Facebook account (what if your name were John Smith? Uh-oh, they’ll never 100% verify that you joined their group on Facebook AND invited all your friends!).
• At the end of the Facebook group description, they belabor telling you again that this is not a scam. If it’s not a scam, why are you so shady?
• They guarantee that you’ll get your gift card. Well, 80,314 people have signed up for the group to date.  That’s $2,003,350 in gift cards that they’re going to be dishing out. Yeah, with the programming techniques and lack of corporate sponsorship they’re manifesting, this is definitely not going to happen.

Stay away from this group! Who knows why they’re collecting innocent people’s information.

Always protect yourself by never giving out personal information to Facebook groups that you’re not familiar with in the real world.

(Update: I’ve received word that this scam is being repeated by the same person for Amazon.com and Starbucks gift cards as well. See the comments.)

Spread the word about this scam by using the Facebook share button below.

This article is part 2 in the series, The Introvert’s Guide to Social Media.

As a Master’s student, I’m constantly on the lookout for post-graduation job opportunities. It’s an extroverted world out there, and I’m told that networking with others is the best way to land a sweet, high-paying job. Sound familiar?

Yet networking is torture for introverts like me. No matter how badly I want a job when I graduate, willingly trying to schmooze with people is miserable!

Maybe that’s why so many job-seeking introverts travel the dead-end routes of Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com, where you can covertly slip your resume into the corporate coffers without actually having to talk to anyone.

But talking to people is the way to go, even when you’re not looking for a job. Networking with others can also help you hire new employees, find new clients, outsource work, or simply get useful advice.

Fortunately, since you’ve been blessed with introversion, you don’t have to go about it the same way everyone else does. You can do things your way and still be successful.

Networking is as easy as not choking.

About two months ago, I attended a fancy meet-and-greet where students were given the chance to socialize with big-name executives. The hors d’oeuvres were delicious, but I was so terrified that I forgot to chew my roast beef. I ended up choking in front of everyone and had to leave the party early to get my suit dry cleaned.

What did I learn from the experience? For one, that I need to chew my food better.

But I also learned that for us introverts, putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations will never work. You can never be yourself if you’re uncomfortable. If you can’t be yourself, how can the people you’re “networking” with know who you are either?

The secret? Only do what you’re comfortable with.

You don’t need to attend fancy parties to network well. You don’t need to go to conferences, work parties, or even use social media. You only need to do what you’re comfortable with. That’s it.

If that means using only family and friends to find new clients or job referrals, so be it. If that means only using Twitter to make professional connections, more power to you. You’ll be very effective if you’re using the tools that you’re comfortable with, so you might as well not waste your time with everything else.

Of course, you always need to be open to new ways of connecting with people. Before you decide that work parties are useless for you, you better try going to a few. Momentarily get yourself out of your comfort zone before letting your introversion keep you away from valuable networking opportunities.

But don’t let those extroverts make you feel guilty.

Once you’ve chosen your favorite way to network, stick with it. Don’t let extroverts (or even other introverts) make you regret your decision.

Beware: an introvert that avoids work parties will likely be heckled for it. You will become the guy on a diet that has to walk by the donut shop every day, because people will constantly try to make you give in.

Be true to yourself. Hold strong. Society might tempt you into uncomfortable situations, but you know better. You’re in touch with your introverted self.

So, are you comforable with social media?

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about overcoming your initial social media preconceptions. Since using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN to further your career is a lot different from what the I-just-took-a-dump twitterers use social media for, you might as well give it a try to see if it suits your personality.

After all, if it’s not your thing, you can always commit Web 2.0 suicide. That’s your right when you’re an introvert that’s not comfortable.

For starters, here’s a preliminary test to see if you’re a good match for the social media scene. See if you answer YES to a majority of these questions:

1. Are you curious about what well-known people in your profession are doing?
2. Do you want to stay updated in the latest trends of your field?
3. Are you willing to give BEFORE taking?
4. Are you willing to check in at a computer at least twice a day?
5. Are you okay with others branding you as a nerd/geek?
6. Are you willing to promote a friend’s product or service out of pure kindness?
7. Do you like learning new (and initially useless) technologies?
8. Are you humble enough to watch and learn from others?

Did you pass? If so, great. A whole new world awaits you (insert cheesy Aladdin joke here).

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series, to be released soon! Return to the Table of Contents.

This article is part 1 in the series, The Introvert’s Guide to Social Media.

To start off, I must confess that I actively avoided using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN until early 2009. I’ve always been well-versed in these technologies, to be sure, yet my introverted personality has kept me far away. The very idea of tweeting or facebooking seemed pointless and retarded.

To be honest, it still seems a bit pointless and retarded to me. Yet the benefits of using social media outweigh the costs, so I’ve learned how to cope with using Facebook and Twitter as an introvert. You can too.

Social media is initially difficult for introverts.

Facebook and Twitter are both gold mines of opportunity for you, both personally and professionally. Yet because we’re introverted, social media is difficult to use:

• We introverts don’t like small talk. It saps a lot of our energy.
• We have trouble seeing the point of meeting random strangers.
• We prefer fewer, meaningful relationships over loose, superficial relationships.
• We don’t usually keep in touch with people from our past.
• We don’t like talking for the sake of talking, and most of us don’t feel like we have anything to say.
• Networking with others isn’t a top priority for us, even if we want to develop ourselves professionally.
• Offering our opinions to others is an intimate and delicate thing reserved only for close friends.
• Gossip is boring to us. Not because we’re ‘morally superior’ but because our brains aren’t wired to appreciate it.
• We have difficulty seeing the purpose of shouting out random messages into the cloud.
• We perceive social media as a superficial, self-aggrandizing show that people use to get attention.

Yet introverts can also be attracted to social media.

Even with these difficulties, however, introverts have some powerful advantages when using social media:

• We like writing and blogging. Writing is a way for us to share our ideas with others without a pesky conversation.
• We like having conversations online, because it is an impersonal medium.
• We like finding out information about random people that we know (aka Facebook stalking).
• We can find niche groups that fit our specific interests.
• We can listen without having to join in the conversation.
• We can direct the conversation however we’d like. We can talk about ideas instead of people.
• We can feel connected to the world without having to go anywhere. Popularity online is as good as popularity offline for many of us.
• We can be brief (even as short as 140 characters) without sacrificing any meaning.
• We can still develop fewer, personal relationships even over Facebook and Twitter.
• We’re conscientious of those we’re talking to, and will never spam or deliberately bother others.

Overcoming your initial resistance is crucial.

I promise, you’re not a self-aggrandizing bigot if you occasionally update your Facebook status. You’re not putting on a show if you send the occasional tweet. While posting self-centered statuses is definitely possible — like how you just fed your horses in Farmville or just took a crap at work — you can avoid that stereotype quite easily.

Through social media, you can be helpful to people. You can share your insights on ideas and cultivate rewarding relationships 140-characters at a time. This type of social networking takes much more effort than the I-just-ate-pancakes-and-need-to-tell-the-world extroverts are capable of, but that’s okay. You’re introverted, and that makes you powerful.

Want to know why I started using Facebook regularly? It was an experiment. I wanted to see if updating my status would reduce the chastisement people would give me for not keeping in touch with them. As an introvert, I don’t like calling people just to catch up. Anything that can give people the illusion of me keeping in touch is a valuable tool indeed.

The results of the experiment? It worked. Marvelously.

Move on to part 2 of this series, How to Painlessly Network With Others as an Introvert. Or, return to the Table of Contents.

Hello. My name is Cody Nolden, and I’m a self-proclaimed introvert.

If you’re not up on the latest news, introverts represent 57% of the population on earth today. We’re quiet, prefer quality over quantity when it comes to friends, and love getting to know ourselves and others through deep conversations about principles, not people. Some of our extremists could be classified as goths, emo kids, or even manga addicts. But most of us are really quite sociable, and enjoy being around people (if kept within limited doses).

Unfortunately, we introverts live in an extroverted world. With the advent of social media, things have gotten even more difficult. For the sake of our careers, we want to talk with people through tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN. Yet willfully networking with people sucks, both online and off.

You can conquer social media, even as an introvert.

That’s what this series is all about. Feel free to jump right to whatever is most interesting to you — we’ll be adding new parts all the time:

• Part 1: Why Social Media Doesn’t Click With Introverts
• Part 2: How to Painlessly Network With Others as an Introvert
• Stay tuned for more!

Every day, 2.6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook worldwide.  Want to know what people are doing?  They’re playing games like Farm Town, Sorority Life, Mafia Wars, and who knows what else.

If you love these games, that’s fine by me.  It’s a little creepy when you’re a 50 year-old man playing Sorority Life (ahem), but whatever you do in your personal time is totally up to you.  Just do everyone a favor: turn off your couch potato meter.

You know, it’s that little green dot at the bottom right of your screen that says you’re online.  When that dot is green, every single one of your friends knows that you’re on Facebook right now.  And when you’re a green dot for the greater part of EVERY day, everyone knows you’re a couch potato.  Addicted.

Save some face, man, and click “Go Offline” before playing your Facebook games.