Micro blogs are not private space

Not too long ago, I tried to explain to an intern that she shouldn't discuss her assignments in her micro blog. She didn't seem to get it, insisting that her micro blog was "a private space" belonging to her and her friends.

She never asked me how I came to read her micro blog, and if I can read it, I am sure our competitors can read it too.

Believing, wrongly, that micro blogs are their "private space," many micro blog addicts, like this intern, have been saying things in public that they should never have said. Doing so, they may have unknowingly caused unforeseen damage to others, including their employers.

After hearing so much from my colleagues about micro blogs, I decided to see for myself what the fuss was about. One Sunday afternoon when I had not much else to do, I registered for an account. That was simple enough. After registration, no real name was needed at that time, I was invited to "join" the micro blogs of the people that are my contacts on MSN. These include nearly all my colleagues in the office.

I could track most of my colleagues' "friends" without any of them knowing, as long as I refrained from posting any messages. Curious, I spent the rest of the evening going through the many messages posted by people I knew and some I didn't. It was a revelation.

Most of the messages were innocuous enough. There were loads of photographs of people's breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea and night snacks. The next most popular topic after food was pets. One colleague was so infatuated by her dog that she kept posting its pictures on her micro blog, reminding her friends how cute it was. Sometimes she also invited comments on her dress, and, on more than one occasion, her underwear. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the badly taken pictures, probably with a mobile phone, didn't do justice to either dog or clothing.

In another micro blog, I was shocked by the candid comments of a young woman on the shortcomings of her long-time boyfriend. Her micro blog contained a detailed account of their love-hate relationship, it was just as silly as those inane series served up every evening on television. I wonder what had motivated her to allow the public a glimpse of the least flattering side of her private life.

But don't let such trivia blind you to the sinister side of micro blogs, which are often used by people of ill intent to ruin reputations, destroy friendships and seek revenge for real and imagined wrongs done to them by their colleagues and employers. I know people who are affable and polite in person but vindictive and malicious in what they believe to be the privacy of their micro blogs.

It came as a rude surprise as I browsed the micro blogs of my colleagues, to find I was bad-mouthed by someone I knew but hardly ever talked to. Reading her micro blog, I discovered that I was just one of the many people she had verbally abused. She is obviously one of those micro blog hooligans who take perverse pleasure in venting their venom on anyone they don't like in the anonymity of cyber space.

These miscreants observe no ethics and defy all common sense. They are like mad dogs snapping and snarling at everyone and everything, including the hand that feeds them. They feel no qualms in bad-mouthing their colleagues, employers and customers. They are the tumor of an enterprise, spilling bad blood in the office and damaging the corporate image in the eye of business associates and customers.

Many enterprises have chosen to ignore such potential threats from within. They shouldn't, because the cost can be high. In fact, every company should require its staff to observe a set of guidelines on the use of micro blogs and make it clear that failure to do so constitutes grounds for dismissal.

(China Daily 06/11/2012 page8)