Social networking – personal or professional, or both? Where to draw the line?

So those of us who work, for a small business, as a free agent or for a corporation, and have a Facebook or a Twitter account. How to decide whether to use that account for professional purposes?

I see it happen left and right.

For example, someone I know who works for a large corporation told me recently that their managers unofficially encouraged them to promote their products on their social networking pages to their friends and the outside world. For failing to find a better word to describe how it makes me feel, I’ll say icky.

On the other hand, I heard that one of the employees of the national news organization, the kind that specializes in breaking news, shared a piece of breaking news on his Facebook page before it hit the wires. So that person definitely treated his Facebook page as personal but misused it from the professional stand point.

Or, take the Russian President, who during his last

visit to the Silicon Valley signed up for a Twitter account as @KremlinRussia. I’m totally fascinated with the idea that the Russian President has a Twitter account and actually uses it. But it is not the point. I actually looked through it (it’s in Russian, I do speak the language) and there are obviously two different types of messages there. One clearly is posted by his press service, it talks about all sorts of boring stuff like appointments of local authorities. But the other looks like it’s coming directly from the President.

Tweets like “San Francisco – very beautiful city. Today I’m going to the Sillicon Valley to check out Apple, Yandex, Cisco!” (my translation)

Or like “The view from my hotel room.”

Or like “The weather got worse, instead of taking the helicopters, driving to Toronto…” or “Germany and England play today, I sincerely wish them both luck. In any case the best football wins.”

So whose account is that, Mr. Medvedev’s or is it an official account of the President of Russia.

Confusing.

I’m sure that the jury is still out for defining all of these new rules of the game and boundaries. But it seems like in the end the traditional perception of spaces – personal and professional – would be reset.