Updating your blogging policy - you have one, right?

In 2002, Heather Armstrong wrote about her job on her blog, dooce.com, and was fired for it. Since then, being "dooced" has been slang for being fired (or otherwise getting into trouble) for your blog. Last week, possibly for the first time, being dooced spread to microcontent.

A week ago, John McCain's campaign suspended staffer Soren Dayton for posting a link to an inflammatory video about Obama on his Twitter microblog. I first saw the story mentioned on Twitter itself and started paying attention when someone mentioned the name of the staffer in question, since I've met Soren but didn't know he was working for the campaign. Then I read the Politico story and the NPR news blog story and started thinking about "private" spaces on the Internet and how closely organizations are associated with their employees or their members.

Soren's Twitter account was private, meaning if you wanted to follow him, you had to ask and have him approve. I've seen people say they like that setup because they have more control over who can listen to them. But how closely should you scrutinize the short request you get from a potential follower? Many people with public Twitter accounts follow back all the real people who wanted to follow them (just not the spam link posters) - so how careful is someone with a private account likely to be? Plus half the value of Twitter for me is following people with totally different views from mine, so I hear an unfiltered picture from that perspective. If I had a private account, I'd still let them follow me in return. How private can you keep your account and still find Twitter useful?

Another interesting example: Facebook started as a fairly private space, where only Harvard students could join. Then they opened up gradually, first to other colleges and eventually to anyone. Some people didn't pay attention to that transition. I haven't seen stories about being fired for posting information on Facebook, but there's been plenty of commentary (example from the Wesleyan University student paper) about people not being hired based on their profiles. In response, the company has just released a major upgrade to its privacy capabilities. No one knows how many people will take advantage of the new controls. When your community is entered by others, is it your responsibility to renegotiate how public you make your history?

Organizations are made up of people, and their reputations are affected by their people's reputations. Since anything on the Internet can spread rapidly, however privately it was originally shared, some organizations are starting to train employees and members about online reputation. We suggest to our clients that they have a blogging policy so everyone knows what subjects are off-limits (financials, for instance) and what kind of disclaimers they need to make (e.g. I'm not speaking for my employer, or I'm saying this for a client). With the rise of social networks and microcontent, it's smart to broaden the focus beyond blogging - and to update the policy each year with new technologies.