Revenue Architects - Consulting Agency

I was asked this question from Christine Bonner Sierra... I met Christine in a business context. She said... "So this brings up an interesting question in the world of social media - my facebook account is full of working moms who are complaining about ear infections, class field trips and little time to themselves. Do you recommend two accounts for most colleagues?  One for the LinkedIn type connections and one to address the non-work life?  I'll be curious your thoughts before I confirm you into the world of strep throat and Grey's Anatomy critiques.  I hadn't given it much thought until I got your request.  Thanks for making me think today :) "

So what is the right response? Some FB friends weighed in:

Kelly Guilmette at 4:39pm October 30 I guess you could have a personal account and a business account if you were planning to keep those friends seperated... If I were presently in the work force, I probably would not want my coworkers to see that the highlight of my day has been catching a fly that was following me around the house. :)

Matthew Marx at 3:43pm October 30 John IMO no. Too much to manage that way for me personally. To convince me to add my business (LinkedIn) network into my FB I'd need some sort of a "business view" where I could flag contacts as business contacts and they would see certain business-related content only... Hope all is well.

Matthew Wood at 2:46pm October 30 That's what LinkedIn is for, right?

Connor Murphy at 3:04pm October 30 The BBC says that Bosses 'should embrace Facebook' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7695716.stm As for LinkedIn - they have just launched a whole suite of collaboration and networking tools that are targeted at business networking. So I would agree that Facebook for personal, LinkedIn for business is a good split... However - Companies will ...  Read Moreneed their own internal versions to protect privacy, IP, confidentiality etc... . Many companies are moving to fill this space. Many open source plugins are popping up that mimic facebook and linkedin behaviours. Small example would be a plugin like FaceBox for JQuery. I have also seen web parts for SharePoint being developed.

Linda Bent at 3:37pm October 30 My question for you is - what would your alias be for "Personal" so your "Business" networks don't recognize you? ;-)

My Take Cop out answer: It depends. But... I would say Christine should use one Facebook account (they will find you anyway, right Linda?)  And, use the Privacy settings where needed.  Under privacy settings you can set up groups and assign permissions to each group. Most people are using Linked in more for business and Facebook more for personal, but the lines are blurred in our transparent social media driven society... if your friends aren't likely to offend and you're working with friends - one Facebook should work fine!