I’ve been mulling over the concept of personal brand reputation and what’s acceptable behaviour online. When Facebook first became public right after I graduated college, I was adamantly against the concept. Facebook was my personal space online, and allowing my professional world in would create tons of conflict and an anal amount of privacy controls. But I adapted to the situation and made room for my professional life online.
But as transparency and internet archiving continues to proliferate every part of my online life, from blogging to tumbling to Facebook to Twitter to countless accounts I have over the interwebs, when does my personal life stop making room for my professional. Sure, the whole concept of transparency is to showcase your real personality and network. Isn’t it still true that we have some self-censorship?
Even the most brutally real person has to realize that we can’t always write what we think.
I wrote a post recently reclaiming janyxu.com for myself. I taking it out of consideration for professionals who are considering me for a job or looking for marketing advice. But I realize that I can’t. I’m not going to rant about how horrible it was working at my last company. First and foremost, because it’s absolutely not true (in fact, quite the opposite). But secondly, no matter what disclaimer I may have to reclaim my personal space online, people will still use this blog to judge my “personal brand reputation.”
So is there anywhere we can truly be ourselves? Or is it like going to a networking cocktail party… we are ourselves but only about 80% us?
I think personal and professional can find a happy marriage. But even in your personal life doesn’t automatically mean you say, act, and do with out a self censorship, but rather you are acting through your own intentions. It’s also about common sense.
I guess the problem lies with most people is they aren’t congruent in both worlds, especial people in the corporate world. It’s hard to hit the pipe on the weekend, stay professional on the weekdays, and keeping it REAL all week long, without worlds colliding.
But if you were a conservative, prep, and you wanted to work in the tattoo profession, what you define as Personal vs. Professional would be altered . I guess it all depends on the paradigm you live in.
Overheard
Main quad Stanford, 2 guys pushing strollers.
Yeah, were working on a deal to fund a start-up. To do what.
Clean up identities
Stanford girly, applying for VP postition. But there’s photo’s on-line.
Bad photos?
Not too bad, but embarrassing.
Not only will start-up find all identities issues, will contact sites and delete too.
Oh I see.
Outlook?
General partners love it.
Should do very well
Me and my big ears, had to move on
Hey Josh,
I understand that there’s always some censorship, even in irl. However, if, for instance, I’m into fetishes, I can go to a fetish club, event, whatever, and no one would know. The difference online is that all my public conversations with my fetish friends are archived and searchable. Therefore, I don’t have that privacy online that I would have offline. And it would be lovely to have a part of my life online where I can be myself without constantly worrying about who’ll see it and how they’ll interpret my actions.
Clive,
That’s an AWESOME idea. My account on Friendster still shows up in some search results, even though 1) I deactivated the account and 2) took down all the information before I did so. However, I don’t think it necessarily addresses the overall issue. My personal life still has to be hidden. There isn’t an online safe place, where my actions won’t affect my professional reputation.
Thanks for reading!
Jany
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You have good hairstyle. I like the pictures and “fotos” here as well as the cool banner thing. I’m not a professional but a perfectionist.