In the Internet connected world, privacy seems to be athing of the past. Everything you do and everywhere you go is recordable either in words, pictures or videos.
To balance this, we must set clear boundaries on our communication with each other. We can’t fool ourselves into believing as a Scott Stratten Shirt at Blogworld said, “What Happens in Vegas, Stays on Twitter“. We have to assume that everything we say on Twitter, Facebook, Email and YouTube is public even if we are protected a bit through direct messaging or invitation only groups. A client of mine recently got in trouble posting derogatory things about someone that bought their company on a social media application- guess it wasn’t that private!
In order to set boundaries, Lena West of Xynomedia has a simple statement at the end of all her emails:
This e-mail is [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private
She checks one box as appropriate. I think we should do this with all our communication. The press calls it “off the record”. Whether it be email, tweets, phone calls, other posts, we need to set the boundaries with our business and social peers. A connected world still needs trust.
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