Rebecca D Reeve's Blog

Social media has evaporated any remaining boundaries between professional and personal life, and you should get use to it - says Gary Vaynerchuk, wine connoisseur and social media extraordinaire.

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This assertion seemingly dismisses the concerns about the issue of blurred boundaries and the professionalization of personal (via technology devices) that I highlighted in my thesis about the BlackBerry.

Is the work person and play person really the same thing?

What is the advantage for the ‘personal’ in having your work life integrated seamlessly into your private life?

Does this make us more or less secure in our employment? More or less connected to our work? More or less valuable?

Might the assumption that you are your own brand which is always on — observerable and accessible to all people all the time — be an attitude particular to creative professionals with jobs that more closely reflect their personal interests than say tool and die welding?

While I realized that personal relationships, cultivated on “off-time”, have always driven business relationships, and that social networks simply serve to increase the reach and value of these conversation; I still can’t shake the possibly dated concern that the loss of these walls, the that could hide the bad guys, also means the loss of a wall that provides a shade for the good guys in the glaringly transparent and connected world of social media and networks.

Does online work/life integration result in a more sanitized existence for those aware of the online brand they’re creating, or does it just require a higher degree of vigilance in maintaining an online identity?

Does blandness prevail in the name of SFW identities?

What does it mean to be talking about brand management in our personal life? It’s a business term usually used to refer to a company’s image.

Lots of questions.

One thing that’s for sure, the boundaries between work and private life will continue to become increasingly blurred as constant connectivity moves beyond 24/7 email access to integrated social networks.

Despite not generally considering myself a bad guy, I not entirely sure I’m ready to throw back the shades on all areas of my life to all people. This negotiation has been ongoing for quite some time and will continue for the foreseeable future as expectation of access and transparency shift.

In the meanwhile, I’m balancing the integration of work-related contacts into my previously personal-only social network, and it’s working out famously. Notifications from this integrated network about upcoming local events (for fun and work), connect me more closely to my physical community.

Maybe it all comes down to the old maxim that you get out what you put in.

Maintaining a personal brand via social networks is a given in an era of constant connectivity; to be absent from these forums is to be absent from the conversation (and therefore irrelevant?). If you’re not keeping up on producing blog content, managing your RSS feed, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Linkedin, Seesmic, Friendfeed, et al., you’re not fully engaged.

Social media stress…only in San Francisco, home to what I’m guessing is at least 90% of the ‘250′.

Being overwhelmed by social networking options isn’t a new theme, but it’s also not one that’s going away.

This line in Candide resonates loudly:

“…even in those cities which appear to enjoy peace, and where the arts flourish, men are more devoured by envy, cares and anxiety than all the tribulations visited upon a citadel under siege. Private griefs are crueler even than public miseries.”

While the world of social media isn’t quite ‘private’, the stress you’re feeling about it is likely internalized and not a broadly shared public concern. What I take away from this is that if we’re not (appropriately) wringing our hands about public sins, our concerns are bound to be about something closer to home. Being involved in an industry with a self-appointed 250, these private envies, cares and anxieties are something I hear about frequently.

It’s interesting how cyclical all this social media experimenting has turned out to be — after being more than satisfied with my Facebook interaction for the past many months, and then recently joining Twitter in order to communicate with SXSW attendees, I’m back to blogging after an eight month hiatus. The above quote wouldn’t fit into the Twitter or Facebook status fields due to character limitations, never mind that they are an inappropriate venue for these comments anyways.

Last week during her demo at SF New Tech’s Online Video event at Dolby Theaters, Cathy Brooks of Seesmic, said that not all mediums will work for all people and that some people will just never be comfortable in front of a camera. There is no one-size-fits-all medium that will serve everyone’s needs, and so that’s why we continue to be served up with a proliferation of choices on how to connect.

Maybe the fatigue people are feeling with social networks is exactly what’s needed to bring about a round of winners in a crowded space. Will the result be the adoption of OpenID, a handful of super-portals, or will Internet audiences go the way of cable audiences, increasing segmented by a desire for niche networks?

I imagine this will take many more rounds of discovering, experimenting, and learning before any answers become apparent.

Updated: Cory Doctorow on “The Future of Ignoring Things”.