it's pretty difficult to start a discussion surrounding social networking without mentioning facebook. the site was opened to college students outside of harvard the year after i completed undergrad at mary washington, so i've been an active user for nearly six years. i've tried to remain abreast of changes made to the network as well as the controversial conversation on privacy issues. march 2009 brought about a big layout change to the 'book and over 2000 comments on a post by co-founder, mark zuckerberg. i personally feel the update was the best way to showcase the increasingly massive amount of information flowing around facebook.
now, while i'm a big facebook fan, i've had difficulty navigating the connection between the social beast and my professional world. i'm "friends" with my coworkers but i sometimes cringe at what they could be reading on my wall. i found it interesting to learn that (as i figured) an MIT social scientist had actually proven that networks flowing within a firm in the real world differ greatly from those in the virtual world. in the virtual world, i'm carefree to comment on photos, share articles from the fashion industry or entertainment on my profile. be who i am. i'm less inclined to do so in the workplace. i appreciated waber's suggestion that internal professional networks would flow more freely and effectively if people would share more openly their interests and expertise.
i'm eager to watch in the coming years to see as more coworkers become "friends" if waber's theory holds true. what are your predictions?
Barack Book
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Lawrence Lessig suggests that the social media world has made more
information available and google can generate the hits on the information
so fast. He fu...
It will be interesting! I've had a few small encounters where my Facebook world collides with my professional world. In every case so far, they have been positive circumstances of finding common ground that would have otherwise been unknown. New, more open and happy professional relationships evolved where there otherwise would have been much more clinical situations.
ReplyDeleteLara, your post was really interesting to me because I have not yet been in a professional situation where I felt uncomfortable with any of my coworkers seeing my Facebook profile--it was a very social office, plus I'm not terribly active on the site. I do not know if my future work situation will be similar, and I wonder if I will have to adapt my "online presence" accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Caiti. I don't mind coworkers & even family members viewing the information on my profile but its only because I've learned to use some type discretion & privacy online but I wonder if social networking sites can be used professionally as well as personally OR are they mutually exclusive...
ReplyDeleteSo does that mean FB & twitter will turn into professional-social networking sites instead of personal/recreational social networking sites?
Laura, I couldn't agree with you more...facebook is a social beast and is a completely different animal when it comes to your friends. However, most people in your professional life are on facebook as well--and lets just admit that you cant "not" be friends with colleagues and when you put them on limited profile--they know. As for me, I have not been in a professional setting yet so I am interesting to see how my facebook page will change after May when I graduate. I already have those "cringing" feelings when some people see my facebook--not that there is anything bad, but my 15 year old sister does not need to see everything :-). I am glad there are privacy settings on facebook so you can chose what you want people to see. It helps separate what the professional and recreational groups see.
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