Your Facebook photos and comments on friend’s walls can become part of the record that now spills into your next job interview.

Keeping contexts separate is nearly impossible online but some of the advice below on blogging I think is relevant to all social neworking activities.

But the degree to how much your contexts collapse in the “real” world does vary depending on the size of community and how tightly knit it is. In a small enough town, many of your contexts are collapsed already – your role as parent is know, or as soccer mom, or leader of local organization X trying to reform city council bylaws on recycling or pesticide, or they’ll know that you’re the marathon runner, or the blues musician or the bellydancer. People know you wear hat x, y, z when the community is really small. Not all contexts may be collapsed but many will be.

Some companies have developed simple but effective guidelines for corporate blogging like Sun Microsystems’ guidelines and advice:
http://www.sun.com/communities/guidelines.jsp

Tim Bray at ongoing worked on promoting blogs at SUN and published a version in 2004.

-don’t share company secrets
-don’t talk about legal matters
-consider the consequences

But what is absolutely critical is that your library’s management team understands social media and collapsing consequences.

Your Facebook photos and comments on friend’s walls can become part of the record that now spills into your next job interview.

Keeping contexts separate is nearly impossible online but some of the advice below on blogging I think is relevant to all social neworking activities.

But the degree to how much your contexts collapse in the “real” world does vary depending on the size of community and how tightly knit it is. In a small enough town, many of your contexts are collapsed already – your role as parent is know, or as soccer mom, or leader of local organization X trying to reform city council bylaws on recycling or pesticide, or they’ll know that you’re the marathon runner, or the blues musician or the bellydancer. People know you wear hat x, y, z when the community is really small. Not all contexts may be collapsed but many will be.

Some companies have developed simple but effective guidelines for corporate blogging like Sun Microsystems’ guidelines and advice:
http://www.sun.com/communities/guidelines.jsp

Tim Bray at ongoing worked on promoting blogs at SUN and published a version in 2004.

-don’t share company secrets
-don’t talk about legal matters
-consider the consequences

But what is absolutely critical is that your library’s management team understands social media and collapsing consequences.