Be Careful What You Tweet

It’s interesting how many people think that what they say in the big conversation either is or should be exempt from consideration when big decisions are being made – like the decision to hire you or contract your firm. Setting aside politics for a moment, simple emotional outbursts like this have great impact:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

To see what happened to this poor twitterer, there’s more to the story here: How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job « I’m Not Actually a Geek

Or take what happened to this poor FedEx employee from Ketchum who decided to trash Memphis on Twitter when he got to town. This poor guy got crucified and he didn’t even say the word Memphis:

True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I had to live here!”

The result was everyone in this poor guy’s chain of command was told about the incident and how little they appreciated it. (there’s so much more to the story – Be Careful What You Post)

So, if people are that fickle about fairly harmless statements, what happens when you say something a little more emotionally charged?  Ask this 19-year-old resident of Athens Tennessee who found himself charged with inciting to riot for an emotional outburst on MySpace (Top Stories: MySpace.Com Death Threats – www.newschannel9.com).

The moral of the story is that you have to remember that no matter if it’s Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or a local Ning group that what you say is recorded forever and very public. That freedom of speech thing does not protect others from using what you say to make decisions, especially the ones that affect you personally the most.

Mike Seidle

Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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