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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?)"
Guys I DON'T want following me - temp's from startups, etc!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The people who run Facebook aren't stupid - there's so much money involved here that I am sure they will find a solution to this. As for me, I'd just block my old co-workers when I leave, unless I strongly trust them on a personal level.
How many people thought about this 12 years ago and have maintained separate online identities for Work and Recreation?
I did.
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Hide all your data. Add only the friends you want to be able to see your facebook page.
Or just not use Facebook in the first place.
Maybe just don't use it. What is your company going to do, fire you for not wasting work time creating a virtual soap opera?
stuff |
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
It's beyond me why people are so quick to spill their most personal secrets on a social networking site; it just seems to me that people have no idea that anything that they say, type or post is often available for the world to see. Sorry but I don't like that kind of invasion of privacy and I never have...I can remember being 13 years, being on AOL and being wary to give any personal information out that I would want to be in public domain, but I seem to be very alone in this idea in my peer group (26 now).
Heck, I've even had people I used to work attempt to add me to their friends list and I rejected them. Then again I'm one of those people who only accepts invitations from people I know in the flesh, don't allow myself to be searched for and never post anything on the profile anyways.
I can't imagine why, but I don't seem to care what my coworkers think, what my boss thinks, or what my ex-coworkers think. Perhaps that's why I was willing to add them.
I do recognize that some people have the kind of boss that demand to be added to my profile. I'd simply have ignored him. If I was really pushed, I'd either let him fire me (fun times ahead!) or give him access to the limited profile.
Again, though, my boss isn't an ankle-dragging technical cretin.
That would be LinkedIn.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Your Ex-CoWorkers Will Kill Facebook
At least those idiots will do something right before they die.
Speedy thing goes in; speedy thing comes out.
Wait 'till they find out about Fuckbook...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You might say, well if I'm friendly outside of work with one coworker and add that one person to a friends list, but then that person adds every one in the office, including the big boss, to his/her list, can't those people then link back to my page?
Well, yeah, welcome to society. This is not news. This is not technology related. Folks interact. Something you share with one person may in turn be shared by that person with others. It's called discretion, get some.
George: You have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world then George Costanza as you know him ceases to exist. You see, right now I have Relationship George. But there is also Independent George. That's the George you know, the George you grew up with... Movie George, Coffee Shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George.
Jerry: I love that George.
George: Me too, and he's dying. If Relationship George walks through this door, he will kill Independent George. A George divided against itself cannot stand!
Developers: We can use your help.
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.
Seriously? I thought real people grew out of social networking when they got out of college...
Here were are at the obvious end conclusion. Social networking sites are not bad just for children, they are bad, period. Diary books normally come with a lock and key, social network sites come with an invitation for you to share your personal diary with the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world has any desire to read it or not. Social networking is to the Internet what reality tv is to video based entertainment. If we could get the pages judged by American Idol judges, perhaps it would be a bit better, but as long as bright neon spandex clothing continues to be sold in XXXL sizes, social networking sites will continue to plague society.
I personally think it is a bonus feature for my next job interview that I don't have a social networking account.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
They don't have a clue what Facebook is, and even if they did, they wouldn't use it because the UI is too confusing for them.
That's what happens when you code PL/SQL for ten-plus years in a 4-GL IDE - your brain turns to mashed turnips.
What?
Corey makes some good points. Facebook is better than MySpace. Maybe we can take his suggestions and make something better than Facebook. Different types of relationships (ie not just bidirectional friends) would be a start.
In many corporations politics are critical to your success. This permeates through the corporation.
Now what do you do if your boss says they want to be your 'friend'?
This could be politically damaging no matter how you answer it.
What if he isn't in political favor and you want a promotion to another department?
Yes, politics is stupid shit, It's wasteful, harmful, and hurts organization. It is real, and in some career tracks, inescapable. Fortunately IT workers are buffered away from it more then other workers.
The technology part is that what is on your facebook/blog/whatever last a lot longer and come and bite you in the ass.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Will they hurry the f*ck up already?!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war.
So, these services should just automatically de-list people after a year or two, unless you consciously refresh them.
Done.
Jesus Christ, dude. Would you knock it off with the faux-Onion link whoring? The first couple were alright, but it's just getting lame now. We get it - you've got an Onion-style satire site with a tech slant. Please quit spamming every article with disguised links to your site - it confuses trigger-happy moderators into thinking your posting something, you know, relevant or informative.
Mods - the parent post is just a link to his own satire site. His post is sitting at +5 Interesting right now and doesn't address the issue raised in the original article in any way whatsoever. Please don't reward affiliate linkwhoring with Interesting or Insightful mods.
"You and your third dimension."
How stupid is it to get so fucking emotional about the stupid things people get so fucking emotional about?
Oh wait
Well of course you have to have multiple, independent personalities! You wouldn't want eveyone to know that you're really Pee ter Parkr.
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.
Facebook WAS a college age thing. Then two things happened. First, Facebook opened its doors to anyone. Second, all of those college age Facebook users graduated. And now there is a new problem: Their college social life is not so easy to put behind you when you have Facebook constantly reminding you of that night you got totally wasted and had that embarrassing picture taken of you that you don't want your new boss/co-workers to see (you know, every night of your college career).
I always abstained from Facebook under the assumption it was a waste of time and just made stalking that much easier. Little did I know that it would be so much more detrimental to users AFTER graduation. I have many friends who ended up becoming teachers and they are having a tough time. One was an idiot and didn't have any access controls on his account at all. His high school students found his page and had a great time making their teacher miserable for all of the drunk pictures and videos and all of the other stuff that makes an authority figure look more like a joke. He learned from his mistake and locked everything down and tried to eliminate his online footprint until his younger brother posted a video on YouTube. Yeah the kids found that one too and he nearly got fired. Another teacher friend has learned from others. She's even taking it a step further. She is urgently asking friends to remove her name tag from all of the pictures of her posted on their accounts, but that is proving difficult. It turns out that even if you lock down your own account, there is still the matter of your friends' accounts that have all kinds of references to you, especially pictures. It is nearly impossible to remove your internet footprint. To this end, I don't see why those with careers bother with it since it has become such a liability now. Office politics are bad enough without merging your social life in the mix. The only way to have a "safe" profile is to keep it completely boring. No goofy pictures, no oddball friends, and absolutely no postings by friends on your wall. This of course defeats the purpose of social networking because no one wants to be friends with a boring loser.
I guess the old adage is still holds true: The only way to win is to not play at all.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Knell 1:
Firstly, I was invited to join Facebook by someone I knew a while ago. I thought, gee how sweet, ok. Once signed up, I discovered it's an automated email based on your Yahoo address book.
Knell 1(b):
When I contacted her to say "hi, thanks for inviting me, how have you been?" she apologised, not having realised she'd invited me. (insert canned laughter here)
Knell 2:
A close friend spotted me online and invited me. Again I thought, how nice. When I saw his page - 40+ friends and most interactions being via these game/toy-proxies without any real communication going on, I didn't really see the point.
Knell 3:
Soon ended up having 8 friends, people I actually knew. I refused adding all these toys (vampire bites, likeness polls, etc.) that people sent me, but instead wrote a few blog entries about what I've been up to. No-one else had any, and no-one read mine.
Facebook is already dead if you ask me.
I wish Facebook would add a feature that allowed grouping your friends into categories (coworkers, friends, etc.) for your own organization purposes. I used to have a bunch of former co-workers, and distant former friends on my friends list. But I live far from most of them now, never come in contact with them, and probably won't, except in rare cases. So I don't need to know that Jane painted her living room and is waiting for the hottub to be installed. It got ridiculous all the status updates for people that I really didn't interact with.
:) It's the new equivalent of mass-mailings of cutsie-pie stuff.)
So I pruned my list down to mainly people I am actively friends with, or with whom I keep some lines of communication open.
It'd be nice to be able to put users into categories with different features; I don't want to see status updates for former co-workers, and so forth.
(And on a side note, please kill Funwall.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.