A controversy ignited when a Swiss woman was recently fired for logging into her Facebook from home after she told her work she was too sick to look at a computer. This has reiterated the transparency of Facebook and other social networking sites, and the ways they connect your private life with your professional life on a daily basis.  

Applying for jobs out of college, people always warned me about the possibility of future employers scouring my Facebook page to learn more about me. I immediately changed all my profile settings so that only my closest friends and family could view my pictures, information, and wall posts and made sure to delete any pictures that I felt would not best represent my professionalism.  

As I found myself jumping into the workforce I continued to Facebook as normal, but was quickly confronted with a new dilemma–the decision of whether or not to accept friendship requests from my new colleagues.  

Should I <em>friend them</em> and let them into my private life to view all my pictures, friends, wall posts and status updates? Should I <em>friend them</em> but block them from viewing pictures or other specific information, which they would undoubtedly know I had blocked them from seeing? Or should I ignore the request and go on as usual keeping my Facebook strictly part of my home life? And if I accepted one did I have to accept them all?  

It was time to evaluate what Facebook meant to me and how I wanted to use it. When I asked some of my friends what they had done to deal with this I got every answer imaginable.  

One friend said “no way, personal is personal and should be separate from the professional”. She actually seemed appalled that colleagues have even attempted to <em>friend</em> me at all.  

Another friend said she chooses to keep her page private and sends a respectful message to those colleagues who <em>friend</em> her letting them know that she would like to keep her page private to close family and friends and hopes they understand. Others said they were friends with tons of work people and that they had enjoyed the perks of making connections with partners and colleagues in their field.  

And then there are those in the middle who choose to accept requests from some of their colleagues with whom they have formed friendships, but said that it had made them more aware of what they were posting on their page. Almost all of my friends said they would never <em>friend</em> their boss.  

It seems there is no right or wrong answer at all. It depends on how you would like to use your page and how much information you like to divulge.  

As for me, I have decided to use my page as a way to communicate with friends, family and coworkers. I’ve made it a conglomeration of things in a way. I don’t discuss work on my page and I don’t post anything too private. I have removed my political and religious information, just to be judicious.  

Everyone draws their own lines. I’ve made my rule of thumb: don’t post anything I wouldn’t want my mom to see.  

Overall, I find it enjoyable to get to know coworkers a little better, see what their hobbies and interests are and share my interests with them as well. I have kept in contact and made some great connections with past coworkers and I look forward to continuing to expand my Facebook network of friends.
 
<em>-Kaitlyn Anderson</em>