May 30, 2007 10:27 AM

MySpace vs . Workplace
Posted by Douglas Eisenhartat 10:27 AM

Ah, the web. That new phenomenon in our lives. It's simultaneously ubiquitous and nowhere. It's the phone, the TV, the mall, and the newspaper all rolled into one. And it's much more, too, including the 21st century printing press for you, for me - for everybody.

And as with all new technologies, it is full of wonder, and it has its unintended downside, as well.

As this piece from yesterday's Boston Globe makes clear, there is a battleground emerging between the freedom provided by the social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, where everyone can create their own pages, and the more constrained demands of the workplace:

Like it or not -- and many employees emphatically do not -- social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are creating an increasingly murky workplace terrain.

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens on MySpace can make it into the wider world, whether it is office gossip, racy photographs, or first-person accounts of weekend revelry. Conversations -- about work, about bosses, about co - workers -- that used to take place at water coolers or on barstools now potentially have a much larger audience. With one high-speed collision after another between MySpace and the workplace, the personal and the professional are converging in new and unpredictable ways.

This is a challenging arena. While your own pages on these sites may be private, they are also quite often public, and therein lies the rub. Remember, it ain't called the World Wide Web for nothin'. People can see what you post.

So caveat postor: become your own editor as well as a writer. Think twice about what you put out there for the world to see. Rule of thumb: if you don't care if any unintended audience sees it - even a potential hiring manager, boss, or co-worker - then fine, go ahead and put it up. If it's something of a more private nature that you'd rather not have anyone and everyone see, then maybe you want to think twice before sharing it with the world.

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