The Steve Rubel Stream

I'm not a fan of the idea of merging my 2 worlds, personal & professional. My personal world includes family (4 generations), church associates, friends of many types -- most of whom, I'm sorry to say, have no interest in the topics of my work life. I don't want to bore them or waste their time with the conversations I find of interest for my work. Entirely different worlds, in my opinion -- and in my particular case. Others may have more cross-over between their worlds.

I love the idea of this post, but I'm not sure it really captures the full argument for crossing streams (which I really think of more as crossing networks). Because I mix professional and personal on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc., I've been told that I'm much more "accessible" than MPOW's regular customer service channels. That's allowed me to solve member problems faster and change peoples' attitudes about us (ROA - "Return on Attitude"). Yes, trust is a big part of that because they see the personal/human side of me, but it's also a matter of commitment level of participation on my part because I'm personally invested in those spaces.

In addition, crossing networks lets me naturally fill an advocacy role beyond my normal circle of work contacts, and I can act as a Malcolm-Gladwell-connector at a much broader level.

In the end, though, I totally agree that it's a personal decision. I can't wait to see part II, because we're having this discussion internally at work, too.

For me, it was never an option. My personal and professional just naturally combined. In the era of streams, people take what they need.

I've noticed this is much more apparent in Gen Y entrepreneurs (I'm generalizing), but it seems we are less concerned as a whole with privacy and "traditional" breaks between work and personal.

What do you think?

You also have to keep in consideration for this issue all the people who own and operate their own businesses. I freely mingle personal and professional and it serves me well in both areas. I am my company and I'm not afraid to voice my opinions. I'd like to think I'm running a very successful small business and it is driven by new and social media.

I can see how this is more problematic for those working for large corporations or organizations involved in political lobbying efforts.

Bottom line I think is to realize this issue can and will be handled differently by people in different situations. It's too tempting to label everyone the same and say there's just one solution.

I have been crossing the streams for at least three years now - since I first began using Twitter. I'm probably an edge case too, but I think I owe my comfort with this in part to my upbringing.

I grew up in the type of small town where, as the joke goes, you didn't have to use a turn signal because everyone already knew where you were going.

It was nearly impossible to do business with the mechanic, grocer or retail store owner without knowing something about their personal lives. So, today I'm not that uncomfortable knowing when the child of my sales rep at a company loses a tooth. And, if they don't want to see photos of my kid's first grade play, then they can unfollow or unfriend at will!

I moved out of that small town as soon as I could, but perhaps in all of us who embrace social networks there is still a bit of longing for our own bar stool at the place where everyone knows your name.

I am experimenting with mixing these two streams as well. I think each complement the other and provide some cross-over when personal becomes professional...business decisions often need that personal relationship in building trust.
However, I personally object to Facebook's heavy-handed manner of forcing the marriage of the two streams. I want to do it on my own so I can control the pace and interaction.

Good topic. Thin take.
Get emotional. I've gone to great lengths to contrive boundaries between professional and personal. Now I realize that it is incumbent on my health to dismantle all this artificial architecture.
Typo in P6: "They may <space> be fighting a losing battle since this train left the station long ago."
God bless you.

I have kept my streams separate for the most part and the line has been pretty firm: friends and family on Facebook, business on LinkedIn/Twitter. However, your point about your "relationship" with your car dealer has made me think about where that line should be. As a business owner I am never truly *not* working but the flip side is I can be flexible to play during work hours. Perhaps I'm missing out on some opportunities to become more engaged with my customers, vendors and colleagues.
Can't wait to see what you have to say in Part II...

This is a great topic, very relevant. My own choice has been to converge all my feeds (not an uncommon decision for a blogger/entrepreneur who relies on a personal/professional network for input regularly). Convergence gets a bad name, however, and one prime cause is corporations/political campaigns that have sensitive info and haven't created clear policies to manage information and behavior on social media. As a former press secretary on capitol hill, I can say that internal social media policies are very important, because reporters, donors, volunteers, etc., are all looking at a campaign from the outside, and more and more they'll expect to be able to read between the lines of social media messages, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly. As we see more convergence, we'll need to see clear guidelines and SOPs.

Not sure? Someone told me once that true maturity is when you can be exactly the same wherever you are and whoever you are with - no masks, no faces, no contrived appearances to fit in with prevailing opinions of others. Couple this with the screaming hunger for authenticity that we see all around us and I think you have a pretty strong argument for just being you - wherever you are. In a world where we are routinely lied to by marketing people, where politicians adopt a position rather than being themselves, I think people ache to meet someone who is genuinely themselves with real thoughts, honest opinions about things and a point of view.

Perhaps we are coming at this from the wrong angle though. It's not about whether you mingle your streams but how much you share in the first place - I never talk about my children online, never post pictures of them, do not make public funny stories about them that could haunt them from the Google cache in 10 years - so I'm very happy to mingle all this stuff because there are no consequences to doing so.

Politicians and celebrities seem very slow to grasp that people can smell 'fake' a mile away - the days of being able to spin a line and have it hold are fast fading away. Perhaps it is no longer possible to maintain a separate professional facade when a casual Google search will reveal your 'other' life anyway?

The problem with this is it only benefits the completely mainstream middle-of-the-road person. If you have any interests that are not white bread mainstream you open yourself to the possibility of bias. So only those who are completely middle-of-the-road or completely secure (not many are in employment these days) can fully express themselves. Facebook is trying to not allow you privacy anymore.

Afterall... "at our heart, we're all human beings"

Yes, but some of us are more human than others.

Is it just me or is Steve Rubel one of the few bloggers on PR and social media who doesn't talk crap? OK, maybe there are others, but this guy talks sense. If Steve comes to Manchester, I am going to buy him a pint.

I occasionally 'mix my streams' as I have friends who work in marketing, therefore, my public and private life is blended.

There was always a human drive for business socializing - even in the old days of the offline world when he had our 'inofficial' lunches or after-work drinks in the bar. And there we started crossing the two streams. And as offline is just a catalyst for online... Question answered?

Christopher Hart gets my vote. If you don't mind having to think about every second post and classify it and word-smith it according to "personal" or "business" then that's obviously a productive way to spend your time. For me I'd rather spend it on the content or on doing something else.

Anyone who googles me finds all my social spaces and places no matter how I segment them. My approach is to try to behave as if I am in someone's living room or out for dinner with friends or colleagues and not do something stupid but to represent myself as the whole person everywhere. That's not to say that I post on Linkedin everything I might post on Facebook - I kind of dress to the occasion.

While "we" might worry about this isn't it obvious that everyone knows that we have a job and a life and they accept all sorts of things about us. In the social media they ignore the bits that aren't relevant to them at the time, scan past others, and read bits that they are interested in.

I've been through some of the dismantling of the artificial silos of social media business versus social media personal and it is a huge pain in the butt. Luckily I sorted it out before it got out of hand.
Walter Adamson @g2m
http://xeesm.com/walter

I love the metaphor and I am definitely one that crosses the stream. It is done with intention. I am aware of my readers, my audience, and therefore censor some of what I write.

As you mentioned, Twitter is a public forum by its nature where Facebook allows for a bit more privacy. I do utilize the grouping function in Facebook and periodically post things "privately" to certain groups.

My most recent experiment was with using the Lifestream plugin on my blog (http://kenleyneufeld.com) but just turned it off yesterday. I think it was kind of weird to see it all in one place, particularly the FourSquare checkins. When presenting the site to a class the other day, one student said...you went to coffee three times in one day! Haha.

Thanks for bringing this discussion out for exploration.

Kenley, I know what you mean that those lifestreams can get just a bit too much. But you made me wonder was the issue for you - that you were seen to go to coffee 3 times, or that you actually checked in 3 times, and why if you were OK to check in did you find it embarrassing for a student to see that? I also use groupings and such in FB, it doesn't mean that if you "cross your streams" that you spray all your stuff at everyone all the time.
Walter

Walter: I had actually already decided to stop the Lifestream thing on the blog, so it was kind of a coincidence with the class. I think the issue was that it simply wasn't important. I try real hard with my audiences to keep posts relevant and interesting. Checking in for coffee isn't that particularly important (unless you want to sell me coffee). ;-)

Great topic. Great comments.

I can't (and don't want to) separate me into "groups". I understand some of us have completely different work and non-work interests. Professionally, I am a designer, social marketer & web entrepreneur. I am also a avid mountain biker, adventure racer and fly fisherman among other things. My fly fishing buddies don't care about the fundamentals of social media, but they love when I tag a fishing picture of them and their "big fish" then post it online for ALL my friends (work and non-work) to see.

@dalden

I'm not sure if there can be a complete and separate line between personal and professional lives. Maybe we should consider a DMZ where some folks are in both worlds and can meander on both sides.

@andywergedal

The nature of the relationship seems to guide the choice of channel and influence the question of mixing channels. Many of my work colleagues are eager to be LinkedIn but are reluctant to friend me on Facebook because they make a distinction between personal and professional relationships. The operative rule of thumb seems ... "don't be FB friends with your boss" because it makes you potentially vulnerable and gives somebody information that could be used out of context or against you. The flip side is that it denies your thinking, yoiur world and your sensibilities to the people you spend 8-10 hours a day with.

Looking ahead five years, corporations as we've known them will have disappeared. We're all be fully transparent. The division between professional and personal will be meaningless. We'll be doing what we're good at. This issue will disappear as we get back on the path. jay

Privacy/anonymity is an urban concept. Like Laura P. Thomas I am from a small town (1500), and it is ridiculous there to think that you could work with anyone without also knowing them personally in some capacity. For me, like Cindy, it's not about MY privacy so much as it is about the audience: I don't post the same things to my different accounts because the audience for my LinkedIn profile (professional contacts) is not the same as Facebook (mostly family and friends scattered across the globe because of my mobile lifestyle) or Twitter (my personality channel). I adapt the content to the audience. I am considering adding professional contacts to Facebook now that I know how to segment posting but I need to better understand how that works when I syndicate updates from other channels to Facebook.

I like your viewpoint Kristen - very articulate.

Steve, I can't wait to see how you are going to argue this the other way.

I found this to be the biggest thing I had to get over to get started in social media. I came to social media for business with my knowledge of the subject from my personal interactions with the medium which actually made me a bit uncomfortable. I had to realize that the business side of social media can be made separate from the personal and I don't have to tell people the details of my life. I stick to useful business info and it makes it much easier. I suspect as I get more knowledge of the medium the business and the personal will merge in some ways but I couldn't have started without drawing a very distinct line between the two.

Interesting discussion and position Steve.

I agree with you, I see no reason to be splitting the personal and professional me. I am the same person at work as I am with friends.

However, having said that I got a lot of negative feedback from people when I used to connect my Twitter account to my Facebook status. On Twitter I share a lot about the industry I work in, PR, and to the majority of my friends on Facebook this wasn't relevant. Even my friends in the same industry advised they didn't come to Facebook for that kind of content.

Thus my position now is to welcome business relationships on Facebook, I have nothing to hide in my personal life after all, but on the whole the information I share on that platform is not professional and more personal.

Hi Steve,

I have been experimenting with this over the last few months. My conclusion is as follows:

Work/life separation is dead. Work/life integration is now coming into play.

It might be because I am an entrepreneur (and Gen-Y) but there has been a number of benefits already for work-life integration:
- People who know me buy into my stuff based on their knowledge of me.
- People who don't know me get to see full transparency.
- I can manage less accounts (I have been trying to juggle three pages and one profile on facebook. Integrating them all makes for more efficiency).
- People not interested in certain parts of my life don't have to worry. On facebook, etc these move down the stream very quickly and are replaced by other's comments.

People buy into a leader before they buy into a vision. My opinion is that if you have something to hide on a personal level then you should not post it anywhere online to begin with.

Keep up the great work.

JM

I do business with people that I like. Sometimes it takes personal interaction to determine if someone should win my larger business opportunities. I also allow the prospects of my company to interact with me and/or my team for the same reason.

I couldn't agree with you more Steve. It's the personal stuff that makes keeping in touch interesting. Keeping it strictly professional is...well...just boring.

I think this follows from Josh's comments, but mixing the personal and professional helped me land a new job. That's the great benefit to crossing the streams to start creating a "personal brand." Companies and future woworkers see you and know you can use emerging media and they are looking for those qualities in new hires. Thanks for the great post.
TK

Thanks for the great blog Steve. It's an interesting debate and I can see why people do cross the streams - and the practice seems to be rampant. from a personal viewpoint, I hate the idea. Facebook, is my most used social media and it's the space where I interact with my friends and loved ones. I have some colleagues on Facebook too, but only the ones who I count and trust as friends, because there are attittudes I project and things I say on Facebook that I don't want my wider business contact base to know about or see. It's a personal place and I dread the day when it gets taken over for business ends. There are better places to do that like, LinkedIn. If I see friends posting news or information about their business more than a few times, I cut 'em off

I'm a 20- something and where I work many of my colleagues from different generations have been skeptical about Twitter because they think of Twitter as primarily a social network in terms of your personal life.

They have expressed fear about getting involved there because of how it would look professionally, i.e. would it hurt my chances of promotion? The attitude seemed to be that mixing your personal and professional life with "total strangers" was a bad idea.

I know some of these people interact socially with their coworkers here so I think the perception is that unless you already have a connection to a person then it's best to treat them solely in a professional manner. But for me, I see this as a way to increase your professional circle. If you can connect with someone in a personal way it could lead to a deeper professional connection.

I am someone who has taken advantage of Jenny Levine's accessibility in the social sphere for her work expertise, and I am firmly on the "cross the streams" side of the divide. I find it incredibly helpful to be able to DM Jenny in order to get help from her and I find it nice to think that the people who follow me from work are getting the same benefits. Someone upstream said that their personal friends wouldn't be interested in their work-related status updates, and I occasionally get questions from friends as to whether I'm actually speaking English when I start to get techie in my FB statuses, but I've not had anyone complain too loudly yet! This is sort of related to a recent Read/Write/Web article on letting your personal self shine through on work-related accounts, and I (no surprise, I imagine) also believe that I am who I am, regardless of whether I'm working or not, so I have no problem with colleagues getting a taste of my personal life - should they so choose.

This is an interesting debate and I suppose it really does depend on your industry and whether the personal information you share is deemed as 'acceptable'.

As a few people have mentioned, allowing business associates into your personal life could make you more likeable and strengthen the connection - obviously the complete opposite could happen.

Having two separate accounts obviously removes this issue as controlled 'work-friendly' info. can be distributed via one stream and personal info. directed elsewhere - but does this defeat the object of social sharing? Yes, think about what you are saying, but surely complete regulation removes the personal element, the driver of social media?

Working in the media industry, I have a lot more room in terms of what information I can share, I image for some, in other industries it is a much more delicate matter. This decision, I believe, is entirely subjective of your role and the attitude of your business associates.

'In Part II I will look at the case against "crossing the streams." '

Still waiting for Part II Steve...

Merging is where we're headed but as Kristin Sukalac perfectly captured: "...it's not about MY privacy so much as it is about the audience: I don't post the same things to my different accounts because the audience for my LinkedIn profile (professional contacts) is not the same as Facebook..." This challenge will be a thing of the past when the land grab phase is over and we have tools that function as "hubs". Hubs that allow us to send and receive according to purpose not membership.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-ways-to-use-facebook-insights-to-your-ad...