Sharing is caring

When I became a working mother for the first time I radically altered my views on work/life balance. Up until that time I tended to work hard, but then cut off from work after I left the office. As soon as I had children I realised that as a mum you never switch off. And to be fair to the office, if I was a mum 24/7 then I had better be a MediaCom strategist pretty much all the time too.

I found this liberating. I also found that it helped me with coming up with good and fresh ideas. If you don’t worry about whether they’re going to come to you in the office or going round Waitrose then I think you get more of them more of the time.

And then Facebook came along. Facebook made me understand that my work and my life are not perhaps as fully integrated as I thought.

My very first friend on Facebook was Barrie Cree who I worked for in the nineties, but hadn’t been in touch with much since. His picture at the time showed him semi-naked posing on holiday. During all the time I had worked for him I didn’t once see Barrie with his shirt off. (Now Barrie’s picture is much cooler!) But, anyway, the etiquette of Facebook is that your friends, family and colleagues mix it up. Facebook doesn’t subscribe to the boundaries of a LinkedIn where professional connections are easy to embrace in isolation. On Facebook cousins, the mums from the school, ex-university buddies and professionals from the world of media collide.

And this is apparently what Mark Zuckerberg always intended. Quoted in Wired magazine the founder and CEO of Facebook says “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly…. “He adds (perhaps a little judgementally don’t you think?) “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

It’s an interesting issue. Some people want to know all about their colleagues. Others think that coming across professional colleagues’ holiday snaps and domestic tiffs is just “too much information”.

Perhaps my instinct to keep some things in my private life private is an old fashioned one. Maybe if everyone is open about everything then we will all be more accepting of each other’s funny little ways. What do you think… should I publish swimsuit shots from my holiday on the next blog ? Or only if airbrushed?

One Response to “Sharing is caring”

  1. Stuart Nicholson says:

    Great post Sue,
    I must admit that i hadnt ever thought about this point, but its very true.I wonder also to what extent the companies who ban social networks from the workplace are missing a trick that their workforces might well build up a greater sense of community if they learnt more about each other outside profesional life.