I am not sure if this is happening to you, but it is to me, and evidently to many others as well. It is the dreaded incidence of having a conversation you are involved with in one group, bleeding over to a different group. Or, the situation where you are the victim of someone sharing your name in an online conversation, or tagged to online media – all with very negative results. Examples include things like:

A buddy scans old pictures of you and a girl (friend) into his computer, then uploads them to Flickr and tags them with you name. Your current wife sees them and does the math back 22 years to find out that they were taken at the same time you were dating her. Trust issues can have a long half-life.

A working mother sees a Wall post on her daughters Facebook account about a young man she is smitten with. So the mother jumps into the discussion on this young man and razzes the daughter about being careful whom she chases. Three of the daughter’s friends then post an expletive filled rant about how much they hate the guy. Since the mother joined the conversation, the entire ugly discussion now shows up on her wall for all her clients to see.

In my case, my 27 year-old daughter runs her Facebook account as if only her friends have the ability to read it. So when our 12 year-old daughter reads it, we have the dreaded cross group bleed over problem. The older daughter believes she has the right to upload any photo, and use any language that is appropriate with her friends. This happens to be inappropriate for our younger daughter.

Of course there are lots of other stories where someone at work finds a nugget of information from an employees personal postings that can turn into a serious issue. For example, a person that told their boss they were taking the afternoon off to go to the doctor then posts pictures that afternoon of their trip to the amusement park. The boss happens to look at the page, and is not impressed.

This bleed over problem is difficult to control. Sure, people can make all their communications private, but that defeats the purpose of having a place where people can find you, learn about you and engage with you. Most business people would love to have some kind of automated way to separate their professional and personal lives so the two would never bleed over. The best we can do in some cases is dedicate a whole application to business relationships (LinkedIn) and reserve another for personal (Facebook) but this is easier said than done because in both cases someone from the other group may prefer to connect with the opposite structure.

For business people the solution is often to go straight shoptalk online and never engage in personal discussions. For young people, the answer is becoming that they will not use Facebook if there is a chance their parents, teachers, or Sunday school leaders will be able to see how they talk to friends. One thing is for sure, we either have to find a way to cure the bleed over issue, or we have to start accepting that various groups have different levels of formality or language.

The other possibility is that people (even young people) get a sense that everything they say, every picture they post, every video they star in, can be seen by millions – for a long time, and use more discretion.

The ultimate solution I would like to see is that everyone exhibits upstanding character. If no one had anything to hide because everything that came out of their computer was healthy, we would never have to fear bleed over. I hope we get there one day soon…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com