It has become the norm: People using online sites to share what they have – in the tangible world – with strangers.

Power tools, baby clothes for a special occasion, a personal loan – even a dog for those who want to test pet ownership. No longer does one need to buy these items, clogging up storage. 

Nor is this a quaint notion: Person-to-person transactions, popularized by early innovative sites such as Craigslist.org, has exploded into a $26 billion-a-year industry.

Chief among sharers are the “super sharers,” including Rob Gonzalez, who makes a living renting out a room in his Brooklyn condo via airbnb.com and teaching a class he calls “How to live rent-free in New York City.” He posts the class on the website Skill Share.

Gonzalez, a 35-year-old actor who was once a real estate agent, uses Relay Rides to find individuals renting their cars.

"I share my home and I share my knowledge, but there's a lot of stuff I don't have, so while I share a lot of stuff, people also share with me," Gonzalez said.

April Rinne, Chief Strategy Officer at Collaborative Lab, a company based in San Francisco and Australia that specializes in collaborative consumption, summed up the growing phenomena: "We can trade, swap, barter, rent, lend, share, etc., but doing so in a way that mimics what we've been doing throughout history but is relevant in today's Facebook age."

Amy Craparo / Pinterest

Amy Craparo, owner of Wow Factor Cakes in Charlotte, N.C., uses Pinterest as a portfolio for her creations.

The social media site Pinterest is known for its eye-appealing recipes, wedding pictures and DIY projects – and it’s also becoming a place for pinners to market themselves professionally.

Sarah Gubara of Baltimore, Md., describes her Pinterest boards as a “living resume,” a place where she can show off her accomplishments and her interests. One of her boards includes articles she has written, but the rest are mostly personal: wedding ideas and places she'd like to travel. 

“When you’re applying for jobs, no one has the time to listen to people tell their story,” Gubara said. “I felt that Pinterest displays your personality visually.”

Gubara, 23, works for Maroon PR (she said she “stalked” her future co-workers on Pinterest to learn more about them) said she has been contacted via Pinterest to speak on a panel and to write an article. She has since created a company page that she can pull up on her phone and at a conference or meeting. 

“When you connect with someone on LinkedIn – and I like LinkedIn a lot – there’s not that two-way street. It’s more of a Rolodex,” Gubara said.

Pinterest — one of the fastest-growing social networks with 28.9 million visitors, according to comScore — loves that some of its users market themselves on the site.

“Whether it’s a photographer displaying a portfolio, a local wedding planner showcasing event concepts, or a teacher organizing classroom projects and ideas, people use Pinterest in a number of interesting, inspiring ways for their careers,” said spokeswoman Annie Ta.    

Self-branding on Pinterest can be tricky, however, as the site rewards being personal. But branding expert Maria Elena Duron, founder of marketing firm Buzz to Bucks in Midland, Texas, says that allows employers to get a better read on applicants’ personalities and whether they would be a good fit.

Duron recommends using a professional profile photo – similar to one used on LinkedIn – and writing a short profile in the third-person, using keywords an employer might use in a Google search engine.  

Duron suggests signing up for LinkedIn’s advanced feature – free for the first month – and taking note of which keywords send searchers to your profile. Tweak your LinkedIn profile until you’re happy with who lands on your profile, and then use those words for your Pinterest page. And, of course, list your full name.

“If you’re looking for a marketing position, one of the boards could be greatest marketing books, and you pin every marketing book,” Duron said. Also, she recommends maintaining control of your boards. “Do not share boards for your personal Pinterest page.”

The Pinterest portfolio is a natural for artists and designers but also works for words-oriented people. Duron posts her blog items on Pinterest, which allows a reader to see a bulletin board of her posts. The trick: Upload an image and attach a URL. 

Balance personal items with pins from other boards, says Melissa Taylor, a teacher from Denver, Colo. and author of Pinterest Savvy. “Nobody likes a braggart,” Taylor said.

Some small companies, particularly those in the wedding industry, have also come to rely on Pinterest to display their work.  Amy Crapero, owner of Wow Factor Cakes in Charlotte, N.C., posts her own cakes and also the gowns and haute-couture that inspire them.

It also helps with clients, she said, who find it hard to “communicate verbally what they’re thinking visually.”

“If a client says, ‘I want my cake to be lacy, I can go to Pinterest and do a search on ‘lace cakes’ that they have posted and all the lace cakes will pop up and a variety of styles of lace cakes.”

Wow Factor has three employees and one intern, so Pinterest, which is free to use, has helped in a small way. Craparo said several brides a month walk in after spotting her cakes on Pinterest.

“The first time, (the bride) came in with a picture of our cake -- I don’t know if she realized it was our cake,” Craparo said. “She said, ‘I like this one.’ It was neat to see it unfold as a tool that they’re using.”

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You may have a huge roster of Facebook friends, but that’s not going to help you if the fiscal cliff plunges the United States back into recession next year.

If your social network is made up of hundreds of people you haven’t had a real-life conversation with in years, you’re worse off if the economy tanks than people with just a handful of close friends.

Emoticon-based friendships aren’t strong enough to act as a safety net in an unstable economy, University of Virginia psychology professor Shigehiro Oishi wrote in “Optimal Social-Networking Strategy Is a Function of Socioeconomic Conditions,” a study published last month in the journal Psychological Science.  

“In unfavorable economic conditions, under which individuals often need serious practical and material help from others, having a large number of friends might drain all of your time and resources,” he wrote. In other words, you’re not going to lend money to or offer to babysit for someone whose interaction with you largely consists of “Like" this post, and they wouldn’t do these things for you, either.

Using a computer model and a survey of nearly 250 people, Oishi and co-author Selin Kesebir of the London Business School found that investing in few, deep friendships is beneficial when money is tight and you have little chance of moving somewhere better.

In the survey, respondents rated their current sense of well-being and the nature of their social network, which Oishi and Kesebir compared to the income level and the degree of mobility in their zip code of residence. They found that people living in high-income environments, regardless of how often they move, benefit more from having loose ties with a lot of people. They also are better off with these shallow, broad networks when they move around a lot, whether in wealthy or poor situations. 

In contrast, lower-income households that didn't move as often were happier with a small circle of close friends than with a large number of more superficial relationships.

Americans used to move roughly once every five years, but that has fallen to every nine years, said Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia.com. The rate of mobility had been dropping bit by bit since the 1980s, and it really took a hit when the economy went south.

“Mobility goes down when the economy does worse,” Kolko said. “When the economy’s in recession, people tend to move less. There are fewer jobs available for people to move to, and if home prices fall, people can go back underwater or be more underwater and be less likely to sell.”

"If we fully go over the fiscal cliff, it’s likely to slow down or even reverse economic growth," Kolko said. When it comes to housing, "it would definitely slow down and possibly reverse. It would severely affect demand," he said, which means people are more likely to stay put.

Even the people who are moving these days are sticking closer to home, which presumably undercuts the benefit of a far-flung social network. Compared to a decade ago, the number of people who move but stay in the same town is roughly flat, but the number of people relocating across state lines has dropped by 35 percent.

“Having narrow, deep ties is more advantageous in residentially stable environments, particularly if crisis probability is high...," Oishi wrote. "In such a condition, investing in a small number of friends seems sensible and adaptive.” These hypothetical parameters would be reality if economists’ worst-case predictions for the fiscal cliff come true.

So, don’t just tweet this story or post it to your Facebook wall. Pick up the phone and tell your closest friend about it — it could help you survive a fall off the fiscal cliff.

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People walk past a Wal-Mart store with a banner reading "Low prices, every day, in everything" in Mexico City April 21, 2012.

A deli manager at Wal-Mart doesn’t like how the company is being run and is calling for a change in leadership at the retail giant, but she’s not just moaning about her employer around a water cooler.

Venanzi Luna of South Gate, Calif., has taken her battle to the Web, creating an online petition that already has more than 5,500 signatures as of late Monday.

“It is time for things to change. Wal-Mart needs to take responsibility for its actions and change its leadership,” she wrote on the petition on Change.org, pointing to recent reports that the company bribed Mexican officials.

It’s unclear whether Venanzi Luna will get her wish, but her cyber tactic points to a potentially strong tool for workers to turn the heat up in corner offices across the country.

Social media and online petitions, effectively used by consumers to pressure companies to rethink rate hikes and reassess labor practices overseas, could put power in employees’ hands, said labor experts.

“All of these Internet forces are all of a sudden part of the communications currency in the world, especially in America,” said Lee Howard Adler, who teaches employment law and public sector collective bargaining and labor law at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School. “Even the most powerful see some need to address these.”

Having workers use the Internet to get their voices heard, he said, “could have an impact if there’s a large enough response from employees, consumers and citizens.”

Alder stopped short of saying Luna’s petition is the beginning of a movement, but he’s encouraged that “this courageous deli manager is willing to give it a try.”

Indeed, employees may need a lot of courage to talk so publicly about the top executives at the companies that employs them, especially if they’re not union members.

Wal-Mart is well known for having kept unions out of its U.S. operations, and its unclear how Luna’s petition will impact her career. Wal-Mart would not comment on the petition or Luna's future at the company, but in an earlier statement about the bribery scandal, David Tovar, a spokesman for the retailers said: “We are confident we are conducting a comprehensive investigation and if violations of our policies occurred here, we will take appropriate action."

Luna could not immediately be reached for comment.

Casie Yoder, a spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Making Change at Wal-Mart coalition, said the organization was approached by Luna to help her write the petition.

“Wal-Mart could fire Venanzi for her petition but that wouldn't seem to me like a smart decision on the company's part,” she said.

Calling for the ouster of top executives is not totally unusual for labor, said John Revitte, a labor professor at Michigan State University. In the last decade, he said, there have been some unions that have had employee members purchase stock so they can complain at board meetings. “But for people unconnected to unions, complaining about your employer is more rare.”

That doesn’t mean, however, a discontented rank and file that isn’t unionized has no sway when it comes to decisions made about top executives, said Kristi Hedges. Hedges, who's with leadership consulting firm The Hedges Company, has been brought in by corporate boards to repair damage or coach CEOs when there’s widespread dissatisfaction with leadership.

Companies that have leaders who don’t have the trust or respect of the rank and file often end up with low retention rates or dissension at all levels, she explained, and boards will move to address that.

“If the pattern over time is an inability to lead, it’s difficult for senior leaders to be successful,” she said.

The Internet, she added, has created a new way for workers to raise their concerns and boards aren’t going to be happy with such public displays of anger toward the top executives, potentially pressuring them to stand up and take notice.

Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute, isn’t sure such employees' Internet tactics will lead to real change in Corporate America.

“We live in a culture where shareholders are king and often shareholders can’t even dislodge CEOs,” he said. “Since employees are even lower in the pecking order I have a hard time imagining they can.”

Facebook came out swinging last week over reports that employers are asking employees and job seekers to turn over their passwords to access individual profiles and their activities on the site.

The company said in a statement it would “take action to protect the privacy and security of our users,” including potentially taking legal action.

Public opinion is clearly with Facebook on this, and many took to social media to condemn such password shakedowns. But it’s time to tone down the hysteria. It turns out, few hiring managers choose to put on their Sherlock Holmes cyber snooping hats.

Yes, it's disturbing to hear that some hiring managers are asking for Facebook passwords from job candidates. And in this tough economy, saying no to such a request may mean you don’t end up landing the gig because there are still so many people out there looking for work.

But in reality, Big Brother has not taken over the workplace.

“It’s overblown,” said Jason Morris, president of EmployeeScreenIQ, an employee-screening company, about the recent uproar over social media prowling. “I’ve never come across an employer that asked for passwords or anything as invasive as that.”

A recent study by his company found that many companies are not rushing to the Web or any place else to look you up.

The study, which polled 650 HR professionals nationwide, found:

• 52 percent say they never consult these sites as part of their screening process.
• 48 percent of respondents said they did use such sites, but of those only 9 percent say they always do.

“Despite the potential they might hold,” the report stated, “social networking websites are not yet widely accepted as trusted background-checking resource.”

Of those hiring managers using the Web to screen candidates, Morris said, they’re mainly just Googling applicants. “They don’t really even know what they’re looking for,” he added, “they’re just doing it.”

Mining a job applicant’s social networking sites can pose a legal liability for employers, especially when it comes to bias in hiring. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the rest, often provide a picture of a job seeker, including race, religion, disability, etc., and if a hiring manager decides not to offer someone a job after perusing such sites they could face charges of discrimination.

Workers aren't out of the woods yet, however. The researchers said, "We anticipate that the trend of those who utilize these sites as a screening tool will only increase in the coming years."

In the end, Facebook may not have to fight to hard even if this practice becomes widespread because there are movements afoot on the federal and state level to introduce new laws to curb such behavior.

“Maryland and Illinois are already well along in considering proposed bills to regulate this practice,” said Daniel Prywes, an employment attorney for Bryan Cave.  “The proposed bills would broadly prohibit employers from seeking access to private areas of social media accounts, with no exceptions for law enforcement or similar sensitive types of employment.”

So let’s all take a deep breath and realize not every job will hinge on your cyber persona.  

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

What from the "Don't be stupid on social media" school of philosophy do you not understand yet? In case there's any doubt about what you should or shouldn't be saying or doing on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, business psychologists from the U.K. are happy to let you know that those sites are being scoured for dirt or anything else that could trip you up with an employer, potential or existing.

The psychologists, part of a group called OPP, presented its findings at a recent conference on occupational psychology. "When applying for a new job, candidates spend hours pulling together a targeted, convincing and professional-looking CV to secure that interview. But what if your potential employer is not noticing your impeccable spelling and beautifully formatted covering letter, but instead raising an eyebrow at your flippant comments, risqué photos and questionable ‘check-ins’ on Facebook?" OPP says.

The organization surveyed 1,000 people in the U.K. and Ireland, and found:

56 percent of respondents said that they were likely to check out the social media presence of potential employees (although 27 percent of those surveyed said they would be uncomfortable with the same being done to them). On the flipside, 37 percent of people said they change their persona online — so looking at their online presence may be misleading anyway.

Think it's just Facebook or Twitter shenanigans that can get you off someone's list of potential hires? What if you say on LinkedIn that you're interested in "career opportunities" — LinkedIn offers you a check box for that if you want it — even though you're already working somewhere?

OPP notes a real-life case about that in Britain. As reported in The Telegraph, John Flexman "is thought to be the first person in the country to bring a case for constructive dismissal after a dispute with bosses" over his LinkedIn profile:

Mr Flexman is claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds from BG Group, a major gas exploration firm based in Reading, Berks, where he earned a £68,000 salary in charge of graduate recruitment.

As well as loading his CV onto the site, Mr Flexman ticked a box to register an interest in “career opportunities."

Says OPP: "For jobseekers, some pretty common-sense advice applies: Lock down your Facebook profile, and behave on LinkedIn as you would at a professional networking event (without the free bar!)"

Related stories:

• Will Facebook Actions make Timeline mandatory?
• Study: Checking smartphones increases stress
• Prediction: 500 million Twitter accounts by mid-February

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