Sarah@FreeMyCV Blog

Twitter- Why the Fail Whale is the least of your problems.

by Sarah 27. November 2009 09:49
I come to you today with a cautionary tale of the woes of the Internet. Don't worry I'm not about to start preaching about how good the old days were and how I wish we could all go back to corresponding by letter and using quills... although anyone that knows me will know this to be true! Instead I come with a warning, of the perils of disclosure, and how it can get you into trouble in the workplace.

The virtual love train for Twitter has far exceeded my expectations, especially as 'flash in the pan' was what first sprung to mind. I remember my first interaction with Twitter, forever the cynic at new social inventions, I entered my details with a raised eyebrow and expected to find a whole host of things I had to gripe about.  But shockingly, I loved it, and still love it. It has turned out to be a socially convenient, work friendly, staple of my day- my boss was even the one to alert me to the wonders of Twitter Fox; allowing me to be at one with my Twitter stream, tucked neatly in the corner of my browser, twinkling away when a new tweet appears.

Although Twitter is a fantastical tool and especially handy for job seeking, like anything fabulous on the Internet you can waste hours idly reading people's tweets until you end up somewhere and have no idea where you began! N.B to my boss: I don't do this... honest! Time-waster browsing aside, there is a bigger problem with Twitter. The potential for rants. You see a white box with the potential for 140 characters worth of getting-things-off-your-chest. Cue angry messages about irritating late trains, rude people in shops, poor customer service... and you can't help but feeling a little better knowing that you've released your negative energy into the vast abyss of the world wide web.

And of course the potential for rants is endless, especially when you spend a large proportion of your day at work. Let's face it, there are going to be annoyances to you in the workplace. Your sleep deprived, desperation for caffeine makes you intrinsically angrier than usual, and your colleague has just done that one annoying thing too many...

Just typing the words, 'I hate my boss' or 'I hate my job' into the Twitter search brings back a scary amount of angry employee rants. But has the term 'Facebook fired' escaped their attention?! Many office workers have gotten into trouble, and even fired for their errant Facebook statuses, which either incriminate them in falsely claimed sick days or has alerted the company to their intense dislike of the business.

Either way, choosing to disclose your hatred of work on Twitter or Facebook is a seriously misjudged and terrible idea. Helen Popkin, on msnbc.com calls it 'virtual darwinism'- people who fail to realise the error of posting such rants on public channels, almost deserve their fate.

And if anyone isn't familiar with the infamous Cisco/Twitter related job incident, read this and cringe at your leisure.

So the moral of my cautionary tale is this: if you want to keep your job, avoid social networks on those days when you just might blow... or it could be far more trouble than it's worth. And remember the 'delete' key may not save you; Google has a lovely way of caching historical data so your deleted tweets may still turn up somewhere you don't want them to...

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About the author

The FreeMyCV experts match your job seeking needs with their knowledge of the UK job sites. As well as saving you time and hassle, the service increases your chance of getting that next job. The service is free of charge.

Sarah's FreeMyCV blog helps you with regular posts about interview advice, CV writing tips, redundancy help and much more.

Please send any feedback to sarah@FreeMyCV.com

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