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Nine things you probably don't know you can do with Twitter
After a long day at school you go home, make a snack, and log on to Facebook to see what your friends are up to. You check your best friend's status and look at new pictures posted of the football game last Friday. You take some quizzes to figure out what movie star you are most like.

Then, you log on to YouTube to watch some of the newest music videos and some movie trailers. As you continue surfing the Internet, you update your Twitter account, check Facebook two more times, read some blogs, and update Twitter again.

While you're doing homework, you log on a few more times until you go to bed.

When parents go social

What you may not realize is that you are a social networker. You are one of billions of people who log on to a social media site every day. When you're on these networks, you're not using them for research, but rather to interact.

They aren't just for our generation anymore. In fact, the fastest growing demographic segment on most of these sites is adults older than 35. The Fastest Growing Demographic

We've all seen the commercials where the kids are yelling at their parents for posting something embarrassing on Facebook, or they're tweeting their every move.

Although these actions are annoying and weird to us, that's the power of social networking. Everyone wants to be a part of it, even the 80-year-old down the street. Close

Businesses are hiring people whose sole job is to deal with social media. These employees sit on the computer, read blogs, post tweets, look for bad and good reviews, answer questions, and make sure that people on the Internet are happy and saying good things about their companies. The Best Job

Basically, they get paid to be on Facebook and Twitter all day-how sweet is that?

Not only are they managing the company's reputation, they're also looking for new ways to market to you and other users on these sites.

They plaster these sites with contests, promotions, and advertisements in hopes of reaching you and your peers.Close

Your online rep

But with all these new uses of social networks and social media, it's important for you to learn how to guard what information you put out on the Internet, because once it's there, it's almost impossible to get off.

And for good or bad...
The Internet Is Here to Stay

President Barack Obama warned students in Virginia, "I've been hearing a lot about young people who, you know, they're posting stuff on Facebook and then suddenly they go apply for a job and somebody's done a search…" Close

I'm sure you've all heard about Internet security from parents, teachers, and the news. It's even scarier because you also have to worry about the "bad people" finding you and your information from your Facebook, MySpace, or other Web pages. They can even google you and find more information than you probably realize.

And it's not just bad people; it is future employers, college admissions officers, teachers, principals, among many others. What you put on your sites—or your friends tag on their sites—creates a reputation that you may not want out there.

So exactly how do you make your information safe?