This comes about from a high profile news story this morning about Manchester United banning their players from social networking sites, leading to some of them having to delete twitter and Facebook profiles.  But it has been raised in various guises before in relation to everyday professions.  Should employers be able to control what their staff say outside of work time, on the basis they could reveal details about their companies activities.  In this case Manchester United have done so to ensure that all communication can be done through official channels (i.e. so they can control it!) and their circumstance is slightly different to an everyday company.  Football is high profile and the press are all looking for an easy story that can be gleaned from 140 characters.

But what about in the real world?  Should companies be able to enforce their employees off social networking sites?  And more importantly is it in their interest to do so?  I would argue that this level of control is likely to produce rebellion rather than compliance.  Perhaps not for the multimillionaire footballers who have so much to lose, but from the normal employee.  After all, it wouldn’t take much for them to set up a fake profile in a different name and start tweeting even more negative stories as a result of the ban.

I think it is in a company’s interest to let employees have their freedom of speech, and only addressing should there be isolated instances of abuse or misuse.  By all means put a fair usage policy in place to give them some guidelines to work to and make sure you monitor what is being said, but putting complete bans in place is only going to produce more problems than it solves.

Similar debates range about extra curricular activities such as moonlighting, but I’ll leave the final word on that to Judith Lewis – If Your SEO Is Not Moonlighting, Fire Them

I’m not the first person to say it and I won’t be the last but there are times when people should really think before they update the social networking profiles or status’.  We have all heard or read about the potential implications on relationships, jobs etc and if you haven’t, here is a whole site dedicated to Facebook status’ getting people into trouble – Facebook Fail.  There have even been a few high profile cases of celebrities getting into trouble for what they put into the public domain (see Darren Bent Twitter Rant).

People are now becoming comfortable with the use of social media as a means to broadcast our thoughts, communicate with our friends and family and engage with the online world.  But some people maybe have become too comfortable, and have lost the ability to think before they broadcast to the world.  More and more people seem to think that publishing status’ on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or any other channel, containing information about their relationships or working life, is an acceptable part of modern day life.  But what I think people need to consider is whether this is information that they, or anyone else it relates to, want in the public domain either for personal or professional reasons.  You may think that you are only connected to your friends on Facebook so it is OK, but some of those friends may also be colleagues so slagging off your boss, or bragging about a new job, isn’t very professional when that is considered.  Similarly sharing intimate details about a relationship (either good or bad!) might be deemed OK when you are talking to close friends, but would this be information you would give to some of your less well known contacts, colleagues, bosses etc? Probably not.

Social media is great for sharing information, and our daily activities with others.  But I would urge you to think before you type when it comes to social networks and channels, as the information you are writing enters the public domain the minute you press the enter key.