Yesterday morning I was tweeting from the beginning of an industry committee meeting I’m attending this week in Florida. I was griping a little bit about a presenter who was reading every line from his slides. This inspired a response from a friend of mine:

@cjhubbs: I’ve come up with the wording of your next business card Christopher J Hubbs Sr Systems Engineer Please don’t follow me on Twitter

I understand what Jason’s getting at. Do I really want work people seeing my tweets about work, and for that matter connecting my work persona with my tweets about the rest of life?

Social media has changed things in the workplace, for sure. Back in the early days of Facebook and Twitter, employers' general attitudes were typically “don’t waste your time during work hours”. Today, we have social media policies, are encouraged to “like” our employer on Facebook and to self-identify as an employee on Twitter. With all of those changes, though, many are still reticent to connect up in those ways.

My philosophy is a little bit different. When it comes to online life, I see two basic principles:

  1. Assume that anything you put online will eventually be public knowledge.
  2. I will try to not separate segments of my online life.
  3. I will follow my employer’s guidelines for social media use.

Let me flesh out a bit what I mean by these.

Assume that anything you put online will eventually be public knowledge.

What I don’t mean here is that everything should automatically be posted to a global scope by default. When I post pictures of my kids to Facebook, I still limit their visibility to my friends.

But if there’s something that ought to stay private, or something that would be damaging to me or hurtful to others if it was made public, then it shouldn’t be posted online. At all. Regardless of the intended distribution.

I will try to not separate segments of my online life.

I think it’s valuable (and frankly, it’s a lot easier) to not try to hide my personal life and non-work interests from my co-workers. This doesn’t mean that I friend every co-worker on Facebook. But I use the same criteria for adding co-workers on Facebook as I do adding anybody else on Facebook. And what I’ve found over the past several years is that being Facebook friends with these co-workers improves our working relationship as well as our personal friendship.

I think it’s beneficial for folks to see an honest, unvarnished me; that I am a whole person juggling work, family, faith, and other life just like anyone else. I’m Facebook friends with one previous boss and with my current boss (though we were FB friends as coworkers before he became my boss, which changes things a bit).

As time progresses and more and more of our workforce are active on social media, I expect these relational trends to continue. Social media usage will amplify your foolishness if you choose to behave that way. However, if it reflects a life that is wisely lived, presenting a holistic digital picture of life should serve to enhance relationships rather than hinder them.

It does make for occasional interesting moments, though.

At the beginning of a customer meeting with an Asian customer a few years back, when I exchanged business cards and introduced myself, there was a light of recognition in their eyes. “Oh, Chris Hubbs! We visited your website!” I guess this means they do their research, but I’m also sort of curious what they thought about what they found on my site, given that I rarely blog about work but often ramble on theology and music. (As far as I can tell none of them decided to follow me on Twitter after the fact.)

I will follow my employer’s guidelines for social media use.

This one is a no-brainer. My employer has a good set of guidelines for use of social media, which essentially consist of “don’t let it interfere with work”, “don’t speak for the company”, and “remember you represent the company”, and “don’t be stupid”. It means that I have a general note on my blog about page saying that the website contains my views, not those of my employer. (If I blog about something industry-related I will reiterate that disclaimer within the individual post.)

In conclusion

Dave Eggers, in his recent novel The Circle, envisions a social-tech-saturated future where the happy benefits of social sharing serve only to mask a scary dystopian scenario where the social mob mandates total “clarity” - the broadcast of every bit of a person’s life for open viewing by anyone. While I understand what he’s getting at, I don’t think my current level of sharing and openness is too far down that path.

While I undoubtedly post a TMI tweet from time to time and end up sharing silly family anecdotes with co-workers who are FB friends, on the whole this model of openness is valuable for me. Not only does it enhance personal relationships, but by blatantly putting stuff online I think it leads the way for others who might not be as bold, and lets sympathetic readers know that they’re not alone in their opinions and experiences. As far as I’m concerned, that makes it worth it.