Cutline Speaks

When Online Networks Collide

posted by Morgan on January 4, 2008

My online networks are colliding. I used to think of my LinkedIn profile as strictly my "professional" online network and my Facebook profile as my "social" online network. While I like to believe there is a distinction between these two online profiles, I'm finding it more difficult to keep them separate. In recent months, I've noticed that my LinkedIn contacts are sending me "friend requests" on Facebook.

LAPTOP Magazine's December issue has a great article about how to "Clean up Your Online Act."* The author, Dana Wollman, provides sound advice on the importance of maintaining your online profile for a couple of reasons. First, you should assume everyone is looking at your online profile – your friends, your employers, your mom, and you should care about maintaining a clean online profile. Second, you can't control others. What you do offline can easily be published online. Finally, you can't control the content your friends post on your Facebook wall.

While there might not be a solution for keeping your online networks separate, Wollman provides some basic precautionary steps you can take to manage your online profiles:

• Adjust your privacy settings
• Make your profile employer-friendly
• Play up your strengths
• Search and destroy
• Post with caution

If the task of managing your online profiles seems too daunting, don't fret. For a small fee, you can hire ReputationDefender.com, a company dedicated to peruse the Internet to find information about you, and then deliver a report to you about the search results.

* Magazine available only in print

Tags for this post: social networking