Social Media – Managing your Public Profile

We have heard enough about Facebook and privacy settings but a recent run-in with Kevin Pietersen made me think what are we doing about educating employees about what is OK and not OK with respect to social media? When are personal opinions no longer personal and liable because they have become public? While I think it takes a tremendous amount of courage to embrace social media for the older people – it takes more foresight to know when to stop or where to stop!

Lewis Hamilton (@LewisHamilton), the 2008 F1 World Champion recently managed to get into a “twitterscopic” scandal when he accused his team mate Jenson Button of “unfollowing” him when Button never followed him in the first place! Hamilton has over 1.1 million followers. This was after he disclosed data on qualifying lap times that was thought to be confidential at the Belgian Grand Prix last month!

Kevin Pietersen (@kevinpp24), has close to 785,000 followers and was a pioneer in social media when he used twitter way back in 2004. He was named England Twitter Captain in 2008! The South African born, English cricket player was subjected to tremendous scrutiny and every “unfollowing” of a celebrity was subject to debate (isn’t it personal choice?). Kevin is media savvy, having trademarked his initials  KP™, uses Youtube and Facebook but still social media opens the door to challenges. His tweet on Nick Knight earned him a fine of  £2,500 by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). He then also had to deal with a “parody” or “Spoof” twitter account (@kevpietersen24) which had up to 11000 followers! He was nearly dropped from the English team for his text comments to the South African players which allegedly made some "derogatory" references to then England captain Andrew Strauss. Yet we know from marketing – controversy brings in more followers!

Or take the case of Amanda Todd, a 15 year old Canadian girl who was cyber-bullied. She put a 9 minute video of her story on youtube using flashcards and died less than a month later on October 10, 2012 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyHX7wMJBY0)

I guess all this really raises several questions. (1) Social media is public space even if you are putting personal accounts and opinions – how can you protect yourself? (2) Privacy is actually your right but when you go online to social media – you give it away – are we aware of this? (3) For corporations, how are they managing the challenges of educating employees on acceptable and unacceptable social media behavior? Is it in their contracts? Since Social media is evolving – what training is given? (4) How is Education making our kids more savvy as to what they should and should not disclose? (5)What opportunities lie for activists in making the social media sphere more safe?