PUTTING IT
TOGETHER
ALL TOGETHER NOW
By Win Treese
If you’re saying
it to one, you
might be saying
it to all.
Are our “friends” on Facebook really our friends, family, co- workers, or all of the above? How about our
followers on Twitter? Do we really want
to share the same intimate personal
information with all of them?
We’ve all heard the argument for
maintaining a spotless online presence
when looking for, say, a job or running
for public office. That could mean
Facebook profiles, Twitter updates,
blogs, email, and just about any other
information published by or about us
on the Internet. The information is
often available, directly or indirectly,
to people who may know us in a more
conventional way or who have a different context for our identities and
roles. Good advice, as far as it goes.
We don’t want to lose our jobs over
party photos on Facebook, yet it seems
to happen with alarming regularity.
However, there’s a deeper aspect to
what happens to our social groups
when we take them online: They
begin to interact with one another.
Some recent experiences, both
personal and in the news, reinforce
the point. For example, before my
last startup company shut down in
mid-2009, I was followed on Twitter
by an online journalist specializing
in high-performance computing, our
niche in the technology market. I was
intrigued (and flattered) that he was
interested enough to follow me, but
I was immediately censoring myself
about what I should share online and
about what I should keep to myself. I
certainly wouldn’t want to read a status
update about me or the company “hav-
ing trouble at work today” in his blog.
Especially if he combined it with other
information to infer that, for example,
the company might be late delivering a
key product. Fortunately, this was never
an actual problem, but it certainly had
me wondering about what makes an
appropriate post.
