According to Linked-In, “frolleagues” – people who are business colleagues that beg a friend-style social networking connection from you, are increasingly becoming a threat to one’s professional standing.
Said a Linked-In spokesperson this week, “It’s becoming increasingly important that we keep our professional and social lives separate and manage our online reputation as effectively as possible.”
“People need to realise that even virtual actions can have very real consequences,” she added.
At issue is business colleagues who send “friend requests” through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and the likes.
Linked-In says that one out of every three people receiving those friend requests feels obligated to accept them, and even to reciprocate, even though they should know that the odds are good that the friend-requesting colleague has no idea that they sent the friend request!
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This is, of course, one of the evils of address book importing, a practice which has spread like wildfire among social networking sites. Sites which use address book importing software are counting not only on your sending their invitations to all of your friends, but on all of your friends accepting “your invitation” because they feel obligated to.
So, when you get one of those “please friend me on this social network” invitations from a wannabe folleague, realize that not only are you under no obligation to accept it, but it’s quite likely that your colleague has no idea that “they” sent it to you – you’re only receiving it because you happened to be in their address book, which has been scarfed up by some social networking site.
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