Do You Facebook Friend Professional Contacts?

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Clarissa

July 25, 2016

How do you feel about being friended on Facebook by people you know solely in your professional capacity? I don’t mean coworkers or people you like who work in the same field. I’m talking about the kind of people you never had even a shadow of any but the strictly professional relationship or never even met. For instance, the editor of the publishing house where you submitted your manuscript, the Dean of the department where you applied for a job, the organizer of the session at a conference where you plan to go (as opposed to somebody you met at a conference and had a chance to hang out with socially).

I’m much more of a reader than a poster on Facebook, so I have no fear that anybody would read something intimate about me there. But I do fear finding out things I don’t need to know about such strictly professional contacts. From bizarrely sexist cartoons to gushy pro-Rauner posts to cutesy little kitties to love letters directed to Trump to bizarre Putin adoration, I’m finding things about people that make me feel weird.

And it’s not like one reject a Facebook friend ingredients request from somebody you kind of depend on professionally.

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12 responses to “Do You Facebook Friend Professional Contacts?”

Shakti

July 25, 2016

If you both have a LinkedIn and they don’t add you there, it’s bogus. Or they think that Facebook is a better way to network professionally than using that network. (I have no idea how people are supposed to use LinkedIn so…)

This is why people keep their Facebook pages incredibly bland or restrict posts and who can post messages by audiences.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 25, 2016
  
  Academics don’t do LinkedIn, though. At least, not in the Humanities. But everybody does Academia. Why not just connect there?
  
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Pen

July 25, 2016

I know people who do. I don’t, though. It can get weird or otherwise awkward, and in some cases has led to people being fired from their jobs (this is the reason my mom doesn’t have one–it’s happened to one of her coworkers). I don’t think employers or publishers or pretty much anybody has any business nosing around in my personal stuff unless I actually have a personal relationship with them.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 25, 2016
  
  I have no idea why they would want to. Especially if their Facebook is filled with vacation photos in speedos and stories about their divorce.
  
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  1. Shakti
    
    July 25, 2016
    
    It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing is more boring than acquaintances’ vacation stories of speedos that caused divorce.
    
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2. Shakti
  
  July 25, 2016
  
  Some places asked if I had a facebook page and if I’d be willing to friend people on Facebook. Since the job wasn’t “social media director” I declined. It’s like using the internet to surf porn at work; people usually don’t care but it’s a great way to give your employer a pretext to fire you for cause if they need to get rid of you.
  
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el

July 25, 2016

Is there any reason for you to have a Facebook account under your real name? I would not want to have it so. Using a nickname and friends-locking posts prevents anybody finding you, unless you give them the info yourself.

Even now you could delete this FB account and open a new secret one. Or open a new secret one under a pseudonim in addition and use mainly it.

Have never had a FB or a blog under my real name. Don’t want any (work) problems or people I know in RL “following” me without my agreement.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 25, 2016
  
  I was forced to get a Facebook account at work. I protested but it was useless. Everybody else on the committee I was on wanted to do Facebook, so I opened an account.
  
  I have no problem with people reading my FB page but I don’t like losing my faith in humanity very often. 😃
  
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Socal dendrite

July 25, 2016

Certainly not! I even hesitate substantially at the “coworkers I like” category, at least until I move to work elsewhere. Sometimes, my way round is to just ignore the friend request – then I don’t feel awkward about rejecting them but I don’t have to accept them either, and maybe they’ll just think I don’t log on very much.

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cliff arroyo

July 25, 2016

The idea of “friending” co-workers on facebook…. brrrrrrrrrrrrrr (cold shiver of horror).

I’m really not a facebook kind of person and although I get along with most of my colleagues and would count some of them as friends. Still, I feel no need to communicate with them on social networks…. as always my go-to oracle on the whole social network idea is Mother Jefferson

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David Gendron

July 25, 2016

LinkedIn is so useless.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 25, 2016
  
  To academics it’s very useless.
  
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