NO! I don't want to be your friend.

Here is an interesting phenomenon that, if you have used any of the social networking sites ( Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or similar ) you may well have experienced.

Being "Friended" by someone that you don't want to be "Friended" by.

Most of these sites are quite polite in the way in which this happens, which is sort of the problem. Someone discovers your FaceBook profile and hit's the add friend button. Boom! you have an email asking you for authorization, for most of these requests the reply is easy.

Now the dilemma, there are some people who you just don't want in your friend network, or that you have to interact with on a daily basis that just shouldn't see the picture of you and your you and your drunken friend in Canada...you know the picture I'm talking about. But I digress, suppose your boss tries to "friend" you. You could accept, and your whole social networking alter ego is now open to your new friend granting some intimacy never meant for office consumption. Or you could decline, and they get a polite email telling them that do don't want them in your circle, possibly damaging your working relationship from there on out.

I guess part of the problem is that you can't really separate your online life between personal and professional. At some point it all ends up in that great big melt pot called Google (Have you ever googled yourself?) and then everything is open for public consumption.

This leads to another question, if you are an aspiring college student or advancing in your career, would you want this sort of "social" information to be seen, read and used to judge your potential by a prospective employer? A lot of people seem to sanitize their profiles when they go through these sorts of life changes, which doesn't say much for their authenticity or moral character I suppose.

I imagine it's going to be sometime before the real implications of having so much personal, unsanitary information out on the information superhighway are evident. Unfortunately the event that causes awareness of that state might not be a good one for some of us.

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