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Your Ex-CoWorkers Will Kill Facebook
Random BedHead Ed writes "Cory Doctorow writes about the downside of social networking on the Information Week site, with a focus on Facebook. While he starts with some minor but insightful quibbles, he quickly moves to a critique of the core of social networking: 'Imagine how creepy it would be to wander into a co-worker's cubicle and discover the wall covered with tiny photos of everyone in the office, ranked by 'friend' and 'foe,' with the top eight friends elevated to a small shrine decorated with Post-It roses and hearts.' Do you really want to add your boss and coworkers to your friends list? (And more to the point, do you really have a choice?)"
Facebook has already got this figured out... they're testing a new feature that lets you create alternate personalities to keep your various personalities away from each other...
Schizophrenia is a perfectly reasonable response to modern society, if you've accepted that you can't change it and you want to live at any cost, I suppose...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I use LinkedIn for professional networking, and I use Facebook for personal networking. If I know a guy from my work I like well enough to be considered a buddy, I'll add him/her to Facebook. If I know a person on Facebook to be very good at what they do, I'll add them to LinkedIn. It's that simple. It's Structuralism, man - just maintain separate spaces and let them overlap on exceptions only. I'm not going to add everybody I meet at a Conference to facebook, I'll add them to LinkedIn.
I'm amazed there are people who don't do this.
The problem with social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace; et all, is not in regards to their intended use. Rather, it is in the fact that often times in our "new" professional working environment, we have the view that being professional, is the same as being social. So, as a manager, my employees actually feel hurt when I deny them access to my private, closed access Myspace page. When asked I reply with "company policy, sorry" but the reality is, the old rules of there being a division between work and home is dead. If I try to separate my personal life from my professional life, my employees feel an emotional detachment from me, which hinders professional development. However, if I were to include them into my social networking, they would quickly confuse my personal choices with their professional behavior. For example my peers have received feedback during coaching conversations to employees "how can you try to coach me on appropriate topics of conversation while at work when last night your status was 'i need a blunt and some cock tonight'". Details aside, yes it is the case that the difference is at work vs not at work, but people confuse that happens in our personal lives with what happens in our professional lives. My father worked at IBM for nearly 40 years, and the rules he lived by in the office were the complete and total opposite to what I experience at another Fortune 500 company. It is unfortunate that my 17-25 year old employees simply do not see the difference between work and play. More worrisome is my 25-40 year old peers who cave to the pressures to involve the employees in their social networking sites, and have serious professional consequences when something goes awry, or someone decides to create drama. A possible solution posed by some companies is to create internal professional networking sites. Managed by company employees and governed by existing policy, these sites work to enable managers to have professional relationships with employees, while maintaining work-life balance. However, Myspace is compelling, as is sex, and lurid details about interesting people's lives (or uninteresting lives as the case may be). Simply stated, bad bosses use Myspace as a way to monitor or snoop on employees personal lives. As such, everyone, Managers and Employees alike should view it with a healthy dose of skepticism and distrust.
I agree that if one is concerned about a service, they should consider not using it. But for me, not only has Facebook allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family, it's done something greater - it's how I found the love of my life.
:)
My Fiancee and I went to the same high school but were in different grades. Despite being in a musical together, we only talked on perhaps two occasions. One day she wondered what I had been up to (people at my old high school still talked about me after I left due to my NASA work) and sent me a message. Less than a week later, I visited her at her school and discovered someone absolutely amazing.
So, despite all I might disagree with, I owe much of my current happiness to both NASA and Facebook. May they both live long and prosper
I've already run into this issue with my Xbox360 profile. Several coworkers and I were all on each others friends list to play Gears of War against each other. Then my boss joined us which was fine. Then a month after that I get a friend request from the CEO of the company. At first I thought nothing of it, until the CEO commented on how later I was up on the 360 a few nights ago and how I was 10 minutes late the next day. Now I have two accounts, but what sucks is all my achievements, unlocked content, etc are on the original account. Also I've given up my myspace account(didn't use it much to begin with) because some stalker chick at work kept sending me friend requests and making comments about my profile and pictures. I really don't think this social networking stuff is for the better.