ie8 fix
madison

The psychology of social media: Can a visible brand ruin your life?

By | July 19, 2009, 3:11pm PDT

Summary: Having a visible personal brand does not need to be a relationship death sentence. It might just take more work.

I read a lot about social media. Partly because I am interested, partly because I have to in order to write this blog. In all of my reading, there is one implied thought I run across more than others: “Social media is powerful.” It gives any average person who has access to the Internet and a bit of ingenuity the opportunity to create a more vivid, accessible “personal brand” and, if done right, that person can spend 15 minutes in the Internet spotlight. But at what cost?

We’ve all read the stories about people stupidly posting Facebook status messages about ditching work, only to have their bosses read it. We’ve also heard the stories about the guy who gets caught cheating because he was sloppy with his social networking. I’m not talking about those costs - that kind of human error deserves grief.

I’m talking about the side effects of creating a successful personal brand and, even if you make all of the apparent right decisions along the way, how it can create upheaval in both professional and private lives. The savvy engineer who creates a presence for himself via a blog or social network, only to make his boss feel threatened and then hamper his internal visibility. Or the rock star entrepreneur who feels she can’t get a moment to herself without the world watching, including her boyfriend.

“In business settings, the impact-for better or worse-of social media activities on relationships will be determined by a company’s culture,” said Dr. Pamela Rutledge of the Media Psychology Research Center. “In personal relationships, social media will expose insecurity and a lack of transparency (aka honesty). Social media amplifies information and behaviors. If we value authenticity, this is a good thing… The good news is that social media exposes inauthenticity and selfishness very quickly, so it’s easier to see them.”

Next: Workplace Impact –>

Topics

Jennifer Leggio, aka "Mediaphyter," writes about the "social business" side of social media - including enterprise, security and reputation issues.

Disclosure

Jennifer Leggio

Jennifer is employed full-time with Fortinet, a leading network security appliance vendor. She is also actively involved in the network security community and works with the Security Bloggers Network. She co-manages the annual Security Bloggers Meet-UP at RSA Conference.

Jennifer is also involved with Silicon Valley Tweet-Up, a philanthropic networking event that brings people together to raise money for local family-oriented charities.

The blog posts here are solely her opinion and do not represent her employer or any other organization with which she may be affiliated.

Biography

Jennifer Leggio

Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter) has been a communications professional for more than 15 years, focusing primarily on enterprise technology and security. She is currently the director of strategic communications for a leading network security vendor. Jennifer is also passionate about all things social media, especially enterprise, security, privacy and reputation issues, which is why she writes about these things for ZDNet.

A well-connected communicator, Jennifer has led or supported interactive social networking efforts for security industry conferences including RSA Conference, Black Hat USA and SOURCE Conference, and founded the Security Twits, a community for network security professionals. She also helps run communications for the Security Bloggers Network.

Finally, Jennifer co-hosts the Quick'n'Dirty social media podcast with Aaron Strout, is a founding member of Technically Women, a communal blog project, and manages marketing and public relations for Silicon Valley Tweet-Up, a networking group that raises money for family-oriented charities. Jennifer was profiled in Silicon Valley San Jose Business Journal's "40 Under 40" edition, as a rising star for 2009.

17
Comments

Join the conversation!

Just In

RE: The psychology of social media: Can a visible brand ruin your life?
CharlesEtheridge@... 11th Aug 2009
I've long found the idea of social media to be quite repelling. I don't even do any more with my Instant Messaging than to right click the icon on the taskbar and then choose to shut the thing down. Regular email is quite sufficient. As it happens I am disabled and certainly have no interest than such as taking the dog for a (very slow) stroll. Yet I find that my time is very adequately filled by following technology developments, and watching a few movies (Blu-Ray) from Comcast; not even any TV other than interesting things that might appear on PBS like "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The rest of you can have the "Social Media" stuff, just don't try to bother me with any of it.
0 Votes
+ -
The fallacy of social media
wackoae 19th Jul 2009
The so called social media is nothing more than a nice way of collecting persona information without braking laws.

Social media should be called anti-social media. What more anti-social behavior than wasting time in front of a computer instead of socializing in person or on the phone with people. And please, don't try to come up with the cheap excuse of not having time .... if you have time to wast on a computer, you have time to call a REAL friend.

What more anti-social behavior than pretending to be someone you are not and lying to your so called friends??

The so called social media are teaching people and kids anti-social behavior and replacing inter-personal and communicational skills with a fake interface in a useless virtual world.

Everything just to get your personal info and selling it to the highest bidder.
0 Votes
+ -
interpersonational
Hilldiggity 19th Jul 2009
Wacko(ae), your comment really got to me, however off-topic it is from the actual article.

My time is my own, and if I choose to "wast" it talking to multiple people I know in real-life and some only virtually, who cares? If you can make a phone call to your friend, why not meet in person? If you can meet your friend in person, why not just become roommates? I personally find being around others exhausting most of the time and prefer to just be by myself (please see: http://www.annelirufus.com/partyofone/). You can call or hang out with your buddies as you want and I will Tweet or update my Facebook status as I see fit. I was expecting you to lambaste those who no longer have pen pals and write with fountain pens.

And let's not forget that people are plenty fake in real life, too. Deceit, lies and playing a role instead of being authentic was around long before the web. Or TV. Or the phone. Hell, if you are inclined to believe, check out that first book of the bible for examples of fakers.

If Social Media is teaching kids anything, then what are their parents teaching them? If they haven't learned the benefits and value of spending face time with family and friends, it's certainly not the fault of a website or social media.

Lastly, I'm not sure anyone would bid on my "persona" information that I had some beers at the county fair a few days ago or that I think LOST is the best show ever.

P.S. The Firefox browser has a built-in spell check. happy
0 Votes
+ -
There have been several articles about how e
TheBottomLineIsAllThatMatters Updated - 20th Jul 2009
Head hunters, employment agencies and such are collecting data about potential candidates for companies. And several of them are turning down potential candidates because of what they are twittering...blogging etc. People fail to realize once you hit enter it's on the permanent record... Pick up the phone or write a letter - sheesh.
What, you think people should worry about being too
powerful? That's just crap.

And the first two sentences in the article are terrible. You
read a lot? Really? Did we need to know that?
I think this issue of a personal social networking voice versus a professional one is very interesting. I guess a consequence of social media (for better or for worse) is that it makes it much easier to link up and associate not just everything one individual is saying and doing across the web, but also exactly what and who they are affiliated with. I actually think this is overall a pretty great thing that is helping to reconnect people and personalize otherwise "faceless" businesses. One issue, however is where to draw this line on the whole corporate/individual web persona. When can a person publicly say something as an individual without it being tied up with their affiliated business?
0 Votes
+ -
Fame versus substance
happyharry_z 20th Jul 2009
Most social media is about fame (regardless of how many people are attacted to the person). One aspect of fame is to build an image that may have some embelishments. On social media, people get to leave out that aspects of themselves they consider negative, and focus on the positive while building fame. Sadly, the followers of the famous carry a double edged sword and will strike they famous just a vigorusly as they followed. Fans get to be crule that way.

On the other hand, real friends are not so harsh because they have seen both sides of the person, or at least something with more depth than the shallow shell of fame.
0 Votes
+ -
Seriously?
tdhurst 20th Jul 2009
You people think far too much. Not everyone is about gaining followers,
they are just about being themselves. Some people are more interesting
than others.
0 Votes
+ -
Seriously? ???
griz326 20th Jul 2009
>>>Some people are more interesting than others.

No, some people just think that they are more interesting than others.
0 Votes
+ -
Social media is where
frgough 21st Jul 2009
voyeurism meets exhibitionism.
As someone who is living and experiencing this, and
sharing the experience of the journey I really enjoyed the
article.
Having accidentally raised my profile through wanting to
do the right thing, finding a place in the world and in an
existing company after that elevation was not going to be
easy.
I fully agree with the observations that this can lead to
jealousy and breaking management structures and
bypassing certain paths will never be popular.
However I am convinced that business is changing and the
communication layers of the corporate entity have to
change to deal with how people interact.
I had to leave and startup on my own after 19 years of
corporate life.
Intrapreneurs are in every business. It should really make
sense to harness them though as entrepreneurs they
become competition.
0 Votes
+ -
Hi Jennifer,
I'm one of those employers that looks up the candidate before calling them in for an interview. We Google and Yahoo, name and location. We then Google the email they gave. From their we do the same with Facebook, Linkedin, and Myspace. From this experience I would say you can find anyone over 40 maybe once in a local newspaper article posted online. Anyone 30-40 a few times and typically about 10% of them use their resume email the same as their Myspace/Facebook email. 20-30 you can typically always find their names online and their profiles complete with drunk pictures, and bikini tops on social networking sites.

In shot you find everything from a strait shooter, to publically open drug use, discussion on acts of violence they have carried out, all the way to a criminal record with news paper articles.

This method of searching helps us protect our staff from dangerous people. We search one candidate and found out he was prosecuted for child molestation. It took a while to confirm because we couldn't belive the article and the resume were the same person. But one article reveled his college graduating class year which matched our candidate. Location, Name, and Graduating class all confirm, we did not bring him in for an interview.
0 Votes
+ -
Bad Business Practices!
ScienceGeek 27th Jul 2009
How can you be sure you found the correct person? Unless you could
match a social security number and date of birth, you could be way
off. Dates, locations and graduating class mean nothing. Those can
be faked on the internet.

You can google my real name and discover that I've murdered my
husband (yet I've never been married), been convicted of assault, own
an herbal shop, a photography business and a craft business. Look
me up on Facebook and there are at least 400 other people with my
name (odd because I've never known anyone with my name). You
actually have to go about 15 pages in before you find an obscure
reference to one of my publications that is actually me.

If this candidate found out what you did, you could be sued for
discrimination, among other things. Anything can be posted on the
internet by anyone, without accuracy. Your methods and data would
not hold up in a court of law. What you should be doing is a legal
background check through the State Police and/or FBI. That will give
you the correct information and legal justification for not interviewing
or hiring someone.


Why does each generation think their "thing" is new?
20+ years ago we did "user group" conferences, created
professional organizations, and joined community
groups. People that placed more emphasis on these
interactions over more personal interactions suffered
much the same difficulties as you illustrated.
Ok, social networking is now on the internet and you
don't have to book a flight or room to meet with
people thousands of miles away, but in the end
interpersonal communication has just added another way
to connect.
From hand delivered calling cards to notes by post to
telegrams to telephones to fax to email to
internet...next.
0 Votes
+ -
Possible to ruin life
kiazhi@... 20th Jul 2009
It can ruin your life if it is not done properly. Mainly because people knows more about you positively and negatively based on your posting and the things that you are doing.

It is also related to stereotyping of your profile online.

Buddy Me @ http://www.buddymii.com
0 Votes
+ -
What i meant was ...
Tom6 21st Jul 2009
What i thought i said and what you thought i said are 3 different things happy
0 Votes
+ -
I "learned" to block access to all my stuff unless I give permission due to "spamming" by shysters trying to pawn junk off on me.
For me it is strictly social. I can keep in touch with friends across the country when time permits (IE: no pressure).
If a manager is so insecure that the need for personal dirt is more important than professional qualifications - I DON'T WANT TO WORK FOR/WITH THEM! That is what background checks and references are for!
I've long found the idea of social media to be quite repelling. I don't even do any more with my Instant Messaging than to right click the icon on the taskbar and then choose to shut the thing down. Regular email is quite sufficient. As it happens I am disabled and certainly have no interest than such as taking the dog for a (very slow) stroll. Yet I find that my time is very adequately filled by following technology developments, and watching a few movies (Blu-Ray) from Comcast; not even any TV other than interesting things that might appear on PBS like "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The rest of you can have the "Social Media" stuff, just don't try to bother me with any of it.

Join the conversation!

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
ie8 fix
Click Here
ie8 fix
Click Here

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources
ie8 fix
Click Here
ie8 fix