Social web and multiple personality disorder
As use of the social networks spread, questions regarding what we do with it are constantly being raised; one of the most common of which is whether or not we should create different profiles for our different online activities.
This is a complex matter. We are all different, and trying to impose rules is often a waste of time. Internet use by somebody with a reasonably well-balanced professional and personal life may well be very different from another person, who for example, also uses the net for professional reasons, as would be the case with a community manager.
That said; I believe that there are some factors that could progressively establish principles for general use. In the first place, although it may seem obvious to point it out, but not all networks are the same: the criteria we adopt when managing our Facebook page, Google+, LinkedIn, or Twitter, for example, have nothing necessarily to do with each other, and may all be different. The nub of the issue is the use you make of them, which may well be innumerable.
Take Facebook: a network that was conceived for personal use, to be shared strictly on a personal basis, and aimed at campus university students who were not especially concerned about privacy. But over time, it has been taken up by institutions and corporations. Facebook makes it perfectly clear that its profiles are strictly personal: a person, not a company, or a pseudonym, or a dog, or a cat.
If you want a Facebook page for your company, your pet, or a fictitious person, the tool is not your profile, but your page. If you create two different profiles, you are, in principle, breaking one of the terms of use, and if somebody reports your profile because it does not belong to a real person, or because you are using a false name, you could be removed from the site. So it seems clear that there are clear limitations on the use of the network: you can manage as many pages as you like or that you require for professional reasons, but your profile, in theory, is unique. To manage the information about you that you want other people to see, you use your privacy preferences, with all that entails.
Google+ takes a similar approach. This is not, strictly speaking, a social network, but instead something closer to the reinvention that Google itself has undergone, and that has more to do with the idea of a single personality. You create a profile, which applies to practically everything you do on the web, whether it is searching, commenting, sharing, etc. As with Facebook, you can create multiple pages, although this seems mainly to apply to businesses, or perhaps has not yet been taken up widely enough by individuals, given its relative newness.
LinkenIn applies the concept of a profile in its purest form: a network for professionals, nobody is likely to doubt that a profile is unique, whole, and real. Nobody would bother having a number of profiles on LinkedIn, although, once again, it is possible for somebody with a profile to also manage their business’ presence on the site. An entrepreneur might hypothetically have a personal profile, list their company as their job description, and at the same time manage the file of said company to advertise it or to announce job offers. But there is only one personal profile.
So, without wishing to press the point, we’re talking about networks that are for personal use mainly. Can you create several personal profiles on them? Of course, but in the first place you would be breaking the terms of use, and what’s more it would be quite hard work to manage them: you would have to use different navigators, or be constantly logging in and out. If you want to manage your personal and corporate profile at the same time, go ahead, but they shouldn’t be profiles, but pages, or their equivalents. If you really are determined to have different personalities, like a teenager hiding things from your parents… then you have a problem (possibly psychological: that’s not my department, but think about it:-).
Twitter, however, is a different matter. This is a social network that has no problem with its users having multiple accounts. You can open as many as you like, without breaking the terms of use. Neither does it provide specific tools for corporate or personal management, and it is not concerned with privacy, unless your account is protected—which is the case in less than 10% of users. In other words, everything you share is public: anybody can read what you tweet.
We should know by now that everything we do online can be found through search engines. In which case, applying a certain common sense to your use of the internet to balance personal and professional needs is highly recommended; while managing several accounts is a good idea if you want to keep your different spheres of activity separate, and all the more so if managing a Twitter account falls within your professional responsibilities. On occasions, it is a good idea even to hide one’s identity: let’s face it, if you are an idiot on Twitter, you are probably one in the real world, and that could affect your employability. I for one would rather not employ or work with an idiot.
As I discussed on one of the chapters in my book, the social networks are engendering a neo-humanism that is blurring many of the frontiers between the personal and the professional. I see this in terms of what you are and what you do. I harbor few doubts that I “am” Enrique Dans, and that this is who I will be tomorrow morning. At the same time, I “am” a professor at IE Business School, but the fact that this is what I have been doing for the last 22 years doesn’t mean that tomorrow I won’t be somewhere else (or at least in a month’s time, taking into account labor legislation).
All of which raises a number of questions: who on Twitter follows a media professional whose success in large part depends on the visibility granted by working via this media. How acceptable is it for this professional to take his or her followers with them when moving to another media? Would they be following him, or his position in the media? There is no clear answer: there have been disputes that on occasion have ended up in court.
Similarly, a great many director general, presidents or other highly visible figures in the corporate world opt for a personal presence, although this doesn’t prevent them from participating in discussions about their brand when they see fit. In many cases, this benefits the brand, although on other occasions it can harm it. For an entrepreneur, for example, it is recommendable to have a single personality that projects their empathy toward, and understanding of, a project, while in more conservative corporate environments it used to be the case—although this is changing—that such figures were kept apart from the public. We should not forget that in certain situations, comments by the head of a company can be interpreted as forward-looking statements, and even be regulated… although everything suggests that these issues may well eventually get relaxed or even disappear in the near future.
I know of large companies that try to limit the presence of their employees on the social networks, for example, preventing them from letting the world know who they work for, so as to prevent any problems that might arise from personal statements that might contradict company policy. Such policies are legally dubious, and are a clear violation of the principle of free speech, and could only really apply in extreme cases such as going on line to insult your boss or the company president.
As we can see, the issue of online profiles is indeed complex, with a great many factors at play, such as the type of social network and who you are. Time will tell, as the networks develop. It is more challenging to manage several profiles than one, and I personally try to avoid it. That said, this is an issue that we are going to find coming up time and again, and about which it would be a good idea to form some kind of position.
