PaidContent published an absolutely absurd piece yesterday on the departure of New York Times assistant managing editor Jim Roberts, who happens to be quite popular on Twitter, the real-time microblogging platform.
Jim -- a lovely fellow by any measure -- has some 75,000 followers. The premise is that the New York Times or any other employer could very well claim a person's following as a tool of doing business, no different than your corporate laptop or the proprietary documents it holds.
Oh, hell no.
Allow me to count the ways in which this is ridiculous:
Questions like this first came about when individual users of the Internet became public users -- when anonymity began to give way to real names, and individuals could be easily connected to their employers. Risk-averse employers tried to clamp down, even though the social web grew largely unfettered. This is the same dynamic that drives the bring-your-own-device, or BYOD, phenomenon in the enterprise.
But it's 2013. Are we really still talking about this? Is there still a lingering perception in business that companies have direct control over what their employees do elsewhere in their lives -- especially on the Internet? (Does the U.S. government lay claim to the followers of Barack Obama when he leaves office? C'mon.) Employers can disapprove of certain activity, sure. But they cannot own.
It's time to face reality. If your company wants to be a social enterprise, as so many seem to lately, then it needs to get the basics down. (To the Times' credit, claiming Roberts' followers was never a question -- it didn't think or care to take them, even though he has "NYT" in his handle, which will soon be changed.) That we must continue to debate this issue is counterproductive.
The people you employ are on the Internet. Get over it.