A friend emailed me the other day to “warn” me about a risk of social networking web sites, in this case LinkedIn. When he signed up for a GLBT group on the popular social business networking site, he was unaware that his membership in this organization would be broadcasted immediately to all his business associates and friends. He is openly gay in his private life, but it’s not something that had come up with a lot of his clients. Not that he was avoiding it or hiding it, but it’s just part of his personal life that’s unrelated to business dealings… until now.

He identified at least two connections who had no formal knowledge of this aspect of his nature. And in an instant, now they do.

What are the problems this might cause? Well, first off there should certainly be some more obvious privacy control when joining groups. Facebook does a pretty good job with this overall, though sometimes they miss the boat as well. The strength of these social networks comes from the fact that the web sites and people behind them must respond to consumer demand to survive. This is also something Facebook does well.

How might this affect his business relationships? In my minority utopian viewpoint, there is a part of me that thinks this kind of honesty and transparency is only good for humanity. But until we all enjoy it and embrace it, which we may never, lines do need to be drawn. It’s not entirely unlike the discussion a couple weeks ago about World of Warcraft impacting a job promotion. In both cases, what could be considered a partially voluntary merging of personal and business lives has led to potential complication. But also, in both cases, it has thus far led to nothing of consequence. My friend admitted this with an “oh well” and his business partner even laughed about the incident.

Most people are more concerned about privacy than I tend to be. Maybe that’s because I’ve never had my identity stolen. But overall I think some of the fear and hatred people feel in this country is related to a universal fear of the unknown. The more we learn about one another, the more tolerant we’ll be. Our imaginations are our worst enemies in most cases and social networks leave much less to the imagination (unless you’ve got a photo of Britney in your profile).

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Social Media, Web