Andy, You are probably better positioned to answer my next question. After writing the blog, I saw a news report in which a company sued a former employee for taking his "connections" with him to a different employer. The former employer wanted to charge $2.50 per connection, an amount that would have cost its ex-employee thousands. So, my questions are these: in your opinion, who owns the "friends" and "connections" an employee develops while working for a company and; What rights do both parties have to this valuable resource and how is the industry treating this subject?
Great post Bolaji--timely and relevant. This is the perfect network of people to post this topic for dicussion. That decision alone is a hard one to make nowadays, given the reasons you and the other readers have unearthed.
I am consantly having to decide where the line between personal and professional content should be drawn. It's a gray area really. But if you play in this space, you live in that gray area every day.
Regardless of the social platform we are on (In my case, most all of them) I believe the most important consideration with every post, article, picture, etc. that we want to share should be its relevance to the intended audience. Even personally, you need to know your audience and be consistent with whatever messaging you choose.
Its a follower's world of choice out there. Your followers show their appreciation with their time, shares, likes, and continued following. If they choose to unfollow even if your messaging is sound, then they probably weren't in your true relevant audience set to begin with. The same is true for offline personal and professional networks.
I personally like the presentation of Google+ and 'Circles'. And though Facebook has tried to copy it, G+ is a place where I can house business and personal contacts equally and segment them at the share level without worry of past content privacy. Its got a long way to go, don't get me wrong, but I think its had a good start. I'm watching closely.
When I see people bragging that they have 5000 followers on Twitter, I always wonder how many of those followers are just porn vendors and others with malignant intentions. They seem rampant on Twitter.
Yea, I'm in the same camp. Have made a few attempts to use Twitter, both personally and through the business. Neither one has generated anything worthwhile in terms of reaches other than one or two undesirable "so and so is now following you" notifications. And by undesirable I mean some stranger who is eager to find someone. Yea. Not going there!
Facebook comments seem more and more like voyages into people's subconscious minds. I am seeing people write things to strangers that they might never bring up in an in-person conversation, or at least that is my impression. I feel more constrained in how I should react, almost as if I were dealing with someone in a hypnotic trance, and I know there might be a bad reaction if the person is startled awake from the trance.
I am finding LinkedIn to be a little easier to work with. There seems to be a little more social self-restraint (or maybe I am imagining that). Not much, sometimes, but on the whole, a little more.
I prefer a divide between my personal and professional communications. I haven't quite figured out how to do this, but I've always viewed LinkedIn as a professional network and Facebook as personal. Twitter...I still don't know yet. And as appealing as Google+ is, I don't need another "Facebook"-type network (apologies to Google.)
LOL. Okay, but I really like singing. I could be a singing astronaut.
My point of course was that social media is sometimes unreliable. I'd love to see if there is a way to measure the truthfulness of the information presented by social media, but I'd have to be able to compare actual histories with reported histories. For that, I'd probably need something like social security data or credit data on individual job histories, which isn't going to happen. Companies with access to that data could perform the experiments, but then again it would probably be an unauthorized and maybe illegal use of the data. Maybe government could perform that test, but then again it seems like a governmental intrusion into privacy for what is arguably a commercial purpose. But just the fact that the data is available probably means it will eventually be used in whatever way the holder wants to use it (unfortunately).
(Edit: By the way, my choice of the name "Joe Isuzu Orchestra" for a fictional employer underscored the tongue-in-cheek nature of my intention. Joe Isuzu was a character created for Isuzu TV commercials who was known for extreme exaggeration. Using his name--temporarily--for an imaginary employer was a way to direct attention to the listing being tongue-in-cheek, which in turn hopefully drew attention to the fact that I write comedy. But again it showed how social media should not always be taken literally. Social media can be a good outlet for creative writing, though.)
Tvotapka, I feel less pressured with LinkedIn than with Facebook. Each time I visit LinkedIn, it's with expectations that the professional groups I am involved with would intellectually stimulate and encourage. It's good to see who's where, what they are doing and how they are progressing professionally. With Facebook, each trip to the site is with apprehension: what would my friends have posted (about themselves that I really don't care for), and who from the past wants to re-engage (often people that were once midly close but for whom I have not much affinity anymore)?
Rich, Little surprise you set yourself up as the "Lead Singer." I always thought there was something special about your curbside singing skills. The decision to place me in the "astronaut corps" baffled me, though. I am one of those odd fellas who love traveling -- on earth. Nothing about space fascinates me in terms of its exploration. I don't have a desire to visit the moon, mars, jupiter, saturn or any other planets and have no wish to meet up with a visiting alien.
Which makes me conclude I would have to swap places with you!
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Join EBN contributor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday August 23, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. EST for a live chat on how electronic manufacturers in Thailand have shored up their supply chain to reduce the impact of future natural disasters.
Peter Drucker famously said "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." Yet in the razor's-edge world of electronics—with a lean supply chain and just-in-time demands—the need to know the future is vital.
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You've heard the saying "the No. 1 supply chain risk is your people." That hasn't always been the case. But today's complex global supply chain requires a new type of multitalented employee. It's one who understands, finance, marketing, economics, is savvy with technology, graceful with relationships and can think analytically.
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