The Social Media Split Personality

Image by Green Heat via Flickr

If you're like a lot of small business people, you've been hearing about social networks (such as Facebook), social bookmarking (such as Digg), and other social media stuff such as blogging and microblogging (Twitter). Perhaps you've dipped your toe in the water, jumped in with both feet, or maybe you're still at water's edge. But newbies and veterans alike struggle with what some people call the "Social Media Split Personality"--the decision of whether to mix your business and personal life, and just how to do that online.

It's a question that people have wrestled with offline, also. I mean, just how much do you tell your boss about what you did last weekend? Sure, if you have that picket-fence kind of life, you can tell people more, but everyone has stuff that they don't want to share. Or at least they decide with whom to share it.

But is everything I just said the way everyone thinks, or just me? Or perhaps my (older) generation that lacks the social comfort for diversity (in every sense of the word) that the younger generation has grown up with.

I've had people confide in me that they have two separate accounts in social media—the business-oriented public face and the private, shared-with-a-select-few account where they bare their souls (and sometimes other things). This split personality might be even more common than we think, because, after all, few people who do it will even reveal that.

Personally, i am not even that brave. I use all manner of social media tools, but I use them for my public persona only. Sure, I'll dribble some safe personal detail now and again, but no more than what I share in a normal business setting. I don't talk about anything even vaguely controversial—I doubt you even know who I voted for in the latest U.S. presidential election.

I don't know if I am doing the right thing. I guess I always wonder if letting people know more information runs the risk of turning people off. I always question whether people who read my opinions on Internet marketing really care who I vote for, or how I raise my kids, or what I watch on TV. I think that they probably don't.

But I do see that more and more people are deciding to be a whole person online. They have one Twitter account that tells me what great blog post they read, but also that they are picking up the kids from school now.

So, I am writing this post while sitting in the examining room for my son's urologist. Does it make the post any more interesting or are you screaming TMI! (Too much information, for those of you who are my age.)

I am comfortable with the way I've partitioned my life and I will stick to it. But I admit to being fascinated by people who have made different choices. I wonder how we'll be doing things in 20 years? My guess is that some people will continue to have split personalities online, but that many others will decide to be open books. I do think its important that we not celebrate one style or the other, but rather make the Internet where that kind of personal choice is welcomed.