Friends vs. Colleagues on Facebook
In Social Networks | 2 comments | permalink
Since Facebook opened up, I’ve been receiving many more friend requests than usual. However, as opposed to grad school or personal friends, I’m receiving requests from people I’ve met in a business setting.
These are people who I wouldn’t think twice about connecting to on LinkedIn but I’m not sure that they’re the people with whom I want to share my personal opinions and activities. Even colleagues I work with on a day to day basis come into question…i.e. where do you draw the line between personal and professional relationships?
As more and more of my personal relationships develop from professional interactions, the question seems more relevant. As we spend more and more time at work, it’s a natural place to develop the friendships that my previously been formed in school, activities or church.
Nevertheless, this blurring of the lines that has arisen from personal and professional social networking sites has given me pause and challenged me to think about who I “connect” with and who’s invite I think twice about accepting.
What do you think and how are you handling the challenges presented by the various relationships you maintain?
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Sphere It
I’m pretty much in the same boat as you. I’ve been on Facebook for a while and it has always been a place to share stuff with my personal friends. While a few of my professional contacts have also crossed over to become close personal friends, for the most part I like to keep the business networking for LinkedIn. People I’ve met a couple times at conferences or talked to on the phone don’t need to see pictures I’ve been tagged in at parties back in college =)
I suppose this is why Facebook offers a “limited profile” feature that you can make available to contacts you are less comfortable with, but I haven’t really embraced it yet.
Hey
I find this really interesting and like you I’m struggling with it a little bit.
I guess I have informally, mentally broken it down into three groups:
- Friends
- People who I work with NOW(agencies, suppliers or co-workers)or have worked with before and have a professional only relationship
- People who WERE co-workers, agencies, suppliers who I no longer work with but became more like friends
I guess the bottom line is, if I have a current working relationship with them then there is no place for that on facebook.
Who knows - it might change over time, or maybe facebook will allow people to have two profiles in the future - one professional, one social?!
Until then, I think I’ll keep work out of it!