Do you friend your co-workers on Facebook?

[algernonsidney]

I'm going to assume that most people here are on Facebook, so I figure I will get a lot of opinions. Since I see everyone's computer at my workplace, I know that a lot of my co-workers are on Facebook. A lot of them have also friended each other.

I also think that friending my co-workers on Facebook would be a HUGE mistake. I have 835 friends on Facebook, so I figure it's only a matter of time before I bump into one of my co-workers. Fortunately, my name is common enough that I am not that easy to find.

Work is work, and personal life is personal. I am very political on Facebook. I express my opinions on Facebook. I say things on Facebook that I would never say in the workplace. My company doesn't need to know anything about my life. I figure that anything I do on Facebook can and will be used against me.

What does everyone else think? Do you friend your co-workers on Facebook?

[Dragonfly]

I'm going to assume that most people here are on Facebook,

Not me, no sir.

[anthony]

I'm going to assume that most people here are on Facebook,

Not me, no sir.

Nor I. I don't dispute that it's an excellent tool, but it is privacy-invasive to my mind.

It is also habit-forming, and these O'ist forums are addiction enough for me.

Tony

[dan2100]

Nope.

[Greybird]

LinkedIn is far more appropriate, in function, milieu, and mores, for co-worker or other professional contacts than is Facebook.

I only have an account on Facebook as yet. Partly because social networking ends up being superfluous for business contacts that involve making or earning money. You have to be in personal contact, at least by phone, for clients or colleagues to take you seriously. A throwback attitude, but it's only slowly changing.

The amount of self-revelation Facebook encourages — and which is hard to corral within its privacy controls — could easily wreck a career if it slopped over into the professional realm.

[dan2100]

LinkedIn is far more appropriate, in function, milieu, and mores, for co-worker or other professional contacts than is Facebook.

I only have an account on Facebook as yet. Partly because social networking ends up being superfluous for business contacts that involve making or earning money. You have to be in personal contact, at least by phone, for clients or colleagues to take you seriously. A throwback attitude, but it's only slowly changing.

The amount of self-revelation Facebook encourages — and which is hard to corral within its privacy controls — could easily wreck a career if it slopped over into the professional realm.

Agreed. Recall, too, a few years ago the "death of privacy" was touted as social networking flourished and then, suddenly, when people discovered that others could easily net stalk them (or much worse: market to them) almost everyone now has all their settings on private.

[Rich Engle]

It's a fair question, I guess, but at the same time it could be either a rhetorical, or one coming from someone that hasn't yet taken a good, hard whipping out of the world of office politics.

I don't work for anyone anymore--I work for myself. I either am teaching, or developing the writing. Therefore, FB is relatively useful, and moderately safe if I use it on my own terms, for specific purposes. But if I still had a corporate gig, no fucking way. There are always, and I mean always, at least one or two that do their ladder-climbing via the route of evil social metaphysics, backstabbing, subterfuge, information-collecting, and general nastiness. If only they put that much labor into their actual job description. Example: You went to a nice gathering. It was good, and you wanted to share that, so you post on FB. Next morning, a douchebag runs to your boss, and does the "my, doesn't he look a bit hungover this morning? wanna know why?" dealio. Get it? That's how non-prime movers operate. Well, one way.

And then there are the ones that spend as much time on FB as a junkie does with his kit.

Either way, if you are on this site (OL), it probably means that a lot of what FB is used for violates your principles of productivity. FB has many potential virtues, as well as vices.

But to answer again, in your application. Hell Fucking No. Exercise: Locate your suspected office informant/social bon vivant, and see if they use FB. Run the math out.

rde

Edited June 11, 2010 by Rich Engle

[Rich Engle]

Heh. Right after I posted prior on this, I had to shower off all the debris that Florida provides when you are out mowing. I use that time to think about all sorts of things, but this time it came to me on this small thing--perhaps a simpler way of looking at it (it sort of popped in there).

Sometime ago, in Corporate America<tm>, Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" became extremely popular; it was given to execs, etc., blah-blah-blah. It was, for sure, a winner if you were looking to gift your boss (except he might get like 5 copies for his coffee table on one Holiday). Anyway, results varied as to comprehension. I think the one quote that turned into the oldest saw was the "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer" one. This is simple on the surface, but actually much more complex if one contemplates it.

Try it for this one. Actually, it kind of doesn't work out like it usually does (it almost always works). You can't, really, and you can't blame Sun Tzu either because they didn't have high speed systems delivering social networking at that time.

It's more like "make sure you know who your friends are."

Something like that.

rde

Thou Shalt Not Twitter

[oklibrarian]

If a colleague (same or higher level than I) sends a friend request, I accept it. I do not seek out professional friends on facebook, and I do not accept requests from subordinates or our student employees for reasons which should be obvious. That said, my privacy level is fairly locked down, and I have NEVER (no, never) posted anything on facebook or a similar social network that I would not be comfortable with my mom and/or my boss reading. I use other channels to communicate with close online friends at levels beyond the superficial. I do reserve the right to hide colleagues' posts and think less of them as professionals if, upon friending, I am deluged with 129 automated requests for assistance with the daily milking on said colleague's virtual cattle ranch.

Sarah

[Kat]

Sometimes I add friends from work... but only if they'll milk my cows or work in my kitchen. B)

btw - it is easy to hide the games so you don't see all the game stuff. Hover over the post until a hide button comes up and then you can stop seeing farmville or whatever. I've blocked the sorority and mob games and others I don't care to see.

kat

[oklibrarian]

Sometimes I add friends from work... but only if they'll milk my cows or work in my kitchen. B)

btw - it is easy to hide the games so you don't see all the game stuff. Hover over the post until a hide button comes up and then you can stop seeing farmville or whatever. I've blocked the sorority and mob games and others I don't care to see.

kat

That's how I do it, there are just a few sad folks who don't really post anything *beyond* that. I could go on a rant about that, but I just watched the "Game" Episode of ST:TNG with my husband over Dinner, so the topic of addiction's fresh in my brain.