Keep Your Friends Close – And Your Frolleagues Separate?

By Andy Coote

A new word entered my vocabulary last week, courtesy of business network Linkedin. Apparently, many of us who are networking online in the UK have problems with our frolleagues. According to a Linkedin press release last week (which was picked up by Guardian and Telegraph at least) we should be keeping a 'separate account or socialising so that business contacts don't mix with friends'.

The problem, it seems, is that we feel that we cannot refuse requests by our colleagues to connect online and then go ahead and post material online that compromises...

...our relationship in some way. A frolleague is a sort of category error where we overshare (my new word) information that would be fine with 'real friends' but not with colleagues.

The Guardian quotes some examples of the consequences.
In 2006, a number of Metropolitan police officers were disciplined after posting a series of joke videos on Facebook, including one in which a policeman said he loved his job because it allowed him to "hit people with a stick".
Other lessons have been learned by a worker who called in sick, but then went to a stag weekend and accidentally shared the photos with his colleagues, while Oxford University is routinely trawling Facebook and fining students who publish evidence of flouting rules on antisocial behaviour.

"People need to realise that even virtual actions can have very real consequences," said a LinkedIn spokeswoman.

I wholeheartedly agree with the spokeswoman but not necessarily with the Linkedin conclusion from that. Far be it from me to be judgemental, but, surely the Met Police officers were tempting fate by letting a video with that quote out onto the internet at all. Private is only a relative term on the internet and what begins... continued on page two >

 

 

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