“Social Networking: The Ugly” is the third installment of a three part series which looks at how social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc) are affecting businesses today.
A few months ago while preparing for a sales meeting with a potential client I performed a Google search of their company name to find out some information. One of the first results I came across was a MySpace page for one of their employees. Normally it’s not a big deal -most people reference their employer on their MySpace page, but I seriously doubt the business owner would appreciate the company’s name associated with the frat party pictures and profanity laced blog entries on the same page.
With the sudden popularity of people blogging/posting about their lives, both professional and personal, employers are almost forced to see what kind of (unwanted) publicity their company is getting. A handy tool for this job is www.Wink.com which compiles online profiles from all the different social networking websites for you.
Last year there was a story about a bank intern (pictured above) who called out sick for a “family emergency”, but the next day he posted pictures from the previous nights Halloween party- which kicked off an email exchange and a bunch of unwanted publicity for Anglo Irish Bank. More recently there have been teachers, police officers and even judges all fired due to ill-advised MySpace and Facebook postings.
The First Amendment ensures freedom of speech but at the same time employers have to protect their company’s online image. To quote Warren Buffet: “If you lose dollars for the firm by bad decisions, I will be understanding. If you lose reputation for the firm, I will be ruthless.”