Wednesday, June 8, 2011

But you're not my friend...

I don't talk about work in my personal social media activities. I don't name my employer or prattle on about what I do for a living in anything other than vague terms. And that is because I like to keep my work life and my personal life as separate as I can. I mean, it's not matter of national security or anything, a Google search and five clicks would probably suss it out. And since I live and die by the guidelines, I'm intimately familiar with does and does not constitute an official company opinion, which the following tale does not. Because it's germane to the story I'll tell you that I work in Corporate Communications for a large financial services organization, and in that capacity I manage our social media presence.

Another department got the green light to launch a social media presence of their own which is separate from the pieces that I manage, but as the Übermensch of all things internet, I had to be involved for a Comms review. To view the page before its official launch, I had to use my personal Facebook account (from home no less, because even the Übermensch can't access Facebook from behind our firewalls) to add someone as a friend.

And now the implementation phase is over... I don't care to know what's up in this person's life and I don't care to share what's up in my life with them. So now I have to "Unfriend" and it's giving me anxiety. Maybe she'll be relieved that I'm making the first move. Or maybe she'll be offended because she likes to have a robust friend list and I prefer to keep things to my *actual* friends. Either way, I'll be making the statement that I said and heard altogether too many times in the playground: "I'm not your friend anymore."

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