I have some friends who are completely off the social media radar, meaning Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Friendster etc... A quick observation, almost all of them (except 1 who is a phd student in biomedical research) work in the financial industry. The few friends I have in the financial industry that actually have a Facebook account use it for little more than photo uploading and tagging (There is flickr and picassa for that you know?!?! But I guess they don't.). I have a few deductions of my own of this phenomenon. This is of course not scientific research and just some retrospective observations.
Time
Yes if you work in the financial industry, especially investment banking, trading or some million dollar position, you will almost most definitely not have the spare time like the commoners. You will most likely be spending time a lot of time at work or want to cos it makes you tons of money. Your idea of having a good time to end the day is probably a spin of your new Ferrari or sitting at the deck of your beach house with a glass of wine, or chilling with a couple of friends at a members-only club. The internet and all the entertainment found there is for the commoners who can't afford these luxuries. You don't need social networking because you can easily drive/jet to a friend. In fact the "less friends" you have the more privilege your circle.
Even if you work in some other department that doesn't make a million dollars, then most likely overtime is the name of the game. You just don't get off early enough to post a status or play cafe world/restaurant city or the likes. You get home to your family or TV (something more passive) and it's bed time.
Relevance
Most of your work doesn't involve anything to do with Facebook. You don't really care if people play games there. As mentioned before, there isn't an activity there that catches your attention. So you don't bother to try of figure it out. Your preferred mode of communication is still email or sms or a phone call. In fact the phone call is the best because it's the most efficient and you get your answers right away.
Security
Working in the financial industry, you're probably sitting behind the thickest (fire)wall in the world. No Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, or anything that might compromise security. So you can be like your friend who works in a marketing agency who updates his/her facebook every hour and has a good reason to do so even if the boss catches him/her. The word is "Market Research" if you don't already know.
Mobile Phone
You use a blackberry or a non-3G phone. You use a blackberry because the company gave you one to check your emails 24/7. You really hate to touch it least to say figure out if it will connect you to Facebook. That phone is the work phone and it stays that way. I do however have 1 friend (F) working in the financial industry who uses an iPhone. A couple of us were having lunch one day and one other friend (from the media industry) (M) started showing me some cool apps she had. F suddenly exclaimed, you mean your phone can do that. M, just download it. F, do you have to pay. M, for some but many of them are free. Me, So what do you use your iPhone for if you don't have apps. So we all know the answer... Emails. Ok it wasn't that bad F figured that the maps function was useful for driving as well. So there you have it...
The Exception
Except for photos, for some reason, no matter which industry you work in if you are born a photo slut, you are just a photo slut. You have a million photos on Facebook and you tag all your friends in (maybe for a while at least.)
Do you work in the financial industry? Or have friends that work there? Know someone really savvy from that industry? Leave a comment below.
