Have Social-Media Tools Been ‘Hijacked by the Professional World?’

Oh, the dilemmas of the Facebook era. A colleague asks to be your “friend” on the social-networking site, and while you don’t feel you can reject that person’s friendship, you cringe knowing that he or she is now aware that Will Ferrell is your favorite comedian — and knows what you look like in a bikini.

Writing on the Social Citizens blog, Kristin Ivie, an employee with the Case Foundation, describes this conundrum and says, “It feels a little like some social-media tools have been hijacked by the professional world.”

A few years ago, says Ms. Ivie, young people were using Facebook “purely to connect with friends, share pictures and personal interests.” But now that companies and nonprofit groups have recognized the value in social-media sites, she asks, do personal online profiles “need to die?”

“In some ways, I think letting the personal bleed into the professional has a positive impact,” writes Ms. Ivie. She says she likes the Twitter feeds of the shoe-company Zappos and of social entrepreneur Tom Dawkins, in part because they pepper personal anecdotes with work-related information.

“And even though guides to professional success would tell me to hide any Susie Homemaker tendencies in the workplace, I do enjoy baking,” she continues. “Do we risk losing respect by revealing some of our quirks? Or do we risk more by keeping them offline? Will we get to the point where it doesn’t matter?”

Ms. Ivie says her approach has been to blend the personal with the professional. Some of her friends were probably annoyed when she filled her Twitter feed with observations from a recent philanthropy conference, and some of her colleagues could care less about her Facebook photos.

Ultimately, she says, “millennials and their use of social networks can usher in a new standard for transparency where we will all have to start admitting to being human. No, I don’t need to know all the skeletons in everyone’s closet, but I don’t think we can continue to maintain the division between professional and personal lives that our parents had.”

What do you think?