Social Media

Today I found myself pontificating on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and other more real time social media sites.  I think they differ from blogging which can be more informational or narrative.  Not that I am against any of them and find uses (even if just pure entertainment) for each.  On occasion.  As a content creator though, I suck.  I know that I have lots of content, just that I also have two big restrictions.

1. Time


2. Firewall

When it comes to time I am not saying that I don't have enough; just that these things just don't rate high enough for me to spend time doing them.  When I have a few minutes or when something is sticking with me such that I know that writing about it will help me move forward - well then I make time.  But I am not in content creation business.  Nor does my business directly benefit from any of these.  Which brings me to the second restriction - the firewall.

The firewall is not the physical firewall here at work.  In fact I am currently at work and have 10 mins before my next meeting and decided to spend it quickly writing this post.  No the firewall is the policy that we have here at work to not write anything about work.  I understand the policy and certainly abide by it.   But it is restrictive. 

I wonder what a world without this restriction would be like?  Certainly those who believe in the virtues of social networking think that it would be better.  Me I am not so sure.  I see both sides.  I certainly see how me writing about the cool stuff we are doing would help the image of the company and possibly help attract talent.  On the other hand it does not take but one bad apple (or post) to be taken out of context and watch the fireworks.  Bad image.  Litigation.  All thing that I believe scare the company and cause it have a blackout policy.

Not to mention that I work for an investment firm and there is the whole insider trading kinds of issues.

Restrictions aside, time is really the bigger reason I don't do more.  Nuff said.  3 mins left before my meeting; think of the possibilities.

Twitter

I finally bit the bullet and signed up for Twitter. I have no expectations of finding any value in this, but I wanted to at least say I gave it a try. It's also one of the few networking sites that is not currently blocked by our corporate firewall (LinkedIn is the other one). As a side note, eBay is not blocked either - sometimes I just don't understand the corporate mentality. Like we are buying our office supplies on eBay. Now that would be funny.