The Online Divide Between Work and Play
May 4, 2009 by admin
Filed under Career News and Advice
By MATT VILLANO
Q. A growing number of colleagues have requested to connect with you on social networking Web sites. You have mixed feelings about giving these professional contacts a window into your personal life. What should you do?
A. Proceed with caution. While it may seem harmless to establish virtual connections with your officemates, doing so might put you in an uncomfortable position at work, says Juliette Powell, who runs a career consulting business and wrote a book about social networking, “33 Million People in the Room.”
Social networking is “all about establishing boundaries,” she says. “If you have something online that you wouldn’t share openly with people in the office, you probably want to think twice about inviting them in.”
Q. Are some social networking outlets more business-oriented than others?
A. Of four popular sites — LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter — only LinkedIn limits users to posting business-related information like work experience and professional recommendations.
Q. What are the professional benefits of connecting with colleagues via online sites?
A. Employees can use them to complement their professional networks — a virtual extension of the traditional Rolodex. Artists post on MySpace and Twitter to advertise their work. Job seekers use LinkedIn as a way to exchange interview tips.
Daniel Simon, an associate at a private ophthalmology practice in Charlotte, N.C., says he often follows a Facebook group to share experiences and discuss techniques with fellow eye surgeons. “It’s a great way to see what other specialists are doing around the country,” he says. “We can share videos, have discussions and post links to articles you might not otherwise get a chance to find.”
Some small businesses even conduct everyday operations over social networking sites. Serena Software, an application development company in Redwood City, Calif., uses Facebook as an unofficial company intranet, encouraging employees to share documents, post PowerPoint presentations and exchange e-mail messages there.
The company even allows employees an hour every Friday to explore the site and update their profiles. “We’re trying to achieve maximum collaboration,” says Rene Bonvanie, senior vice president for marketing. “If people are using this site for personal reasons anyway, why not encourage them to use it here, too?”
. What are the potential pitfalls?
A. Public embarrassment, for one. Comments on many social networking sites, much like blogs, exist forever, meaning that a person can access them at any time, read them and pass judgment accordingly.
Photographs can become a nuisance, too. Especially on a site like Facebook, where someone’s approved contacts can “tag” a user in a photo, there’s a chance that colleagues might come across images of you behaving wildly years ago at a college party, or performing drunken karaoke last weekend, or worse.
“Any time the camera comes out these days, there’s a chance the resulting photos will be on the Internet within hours,” says Nathan T. Wright, founder of Lava Row, a social media strategy firm in Des Moines. “If you’re going to have work people on these sites, you need to understand this threat.”
Dismissal is even possible if you post something unflattering about your employer in a status update or other feature that can be viewed by everyone on your network.
