Paying to Update Online Profiles?

In the whirlwind of work that seems to be surrounding so many people these days, I have found myself trying to catch up and desperately in need of an assistant. As most of my needs involve work on a computer, I decided to look into hiring a virtual assistant.

After speaking with several, I found one who seemed promising, and I was fascinated when I found that her list of services included updating online profiles on MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn and any other online social networking sites.

Why would someone need another person to update their profiles? I asked her, and she said that people were to busy to keep up with several profiles and also that she would add elements to a profile that would make it look better for employers, for college admissions, and even to make someone look better to friends and co-workers. I really thought that was something else, but after thinking about it for a while, it made more sense to me.

My theory is that when someone goes online to update their networking site profile, it is very easy to get distracted, check another email, look at the cool apps and add-ons that are available, and pretty soon the task of adding new photos and updating a profile takes hours instead of minutes.

When you or I go online to check out our friends' profiles or to update our own, we likely spend more time finishing the task. There are so many things to do, interesting games and applications, and pictures and videos to watch that we can get caught up in the distractions and really waste a lot of time (more on internet time-wasting later). On the other hand, when someone we hire goes online to complete a task, it is not for entertainment. Finishing the task requires paying attention to the amount of time spent given that a client is paying usually by the task or the hour.

Someone paying to update my profile would be less likely to waste time than I would, simply because he or she is working on MY profile and would be less likely to have to check out all the updates and comments of my friends, to look at a video or two, and to find out the latest hit single that is on the charts. I shared this with the assistant I was interviewing, and she was delighted and said that she would try it with her own online profiles compared with updating profiles for others.

This makes sense to me, but I would love to hear from others about my ideas. Please feel free to leave any comments or to email me at drfred@drfred.net