I am trying to set up some Google Hangouts, because that is what all the cool kids are doing. The content will be work-related, so I invited a bunch of colleagues who are in my Google+ circles, and then sent the invite to everyone else via Outlook. One of the people who received the G+ invite commented that he preferred to keep work and personal life separate, which prompted some thoughts.

Is it even possible to keep your work life and your professional life separate? And if you were able to, would it be desirable?

Now I suppose I am speaking from a position of privilege, since I don't do anything in my personal life that might get me in trouble at work (boring!). However, I don't think my colleague is doing anything dodgy either, and I am in his friends circle; he just prefers to keep those two sides of his life separate.

I try to keep some separation, on the assumption that people who want cute baby pictures don't want cloud whitepapers - and those who do want both of those things can both friend me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. I also keep Facebook pretty locked down simply because I would find it a bit... icky... for strangers to peruse my photos and so on. Google+, though, is a different case. The tentacles of Google reach everywhere, so if you use G+ at all, I think you're going to find the two worlds bleeding together. On the plus side, not many people seem to use G+ actively…

This is not an issue that is going to go away. It's probably a good thing that social media weren't around when I was in high school and university. The few traces
left of that era on the public web are fortunately fairly inoffensive. My son, though, is going to grow up with these networks as just part of life. This is why I kind of like the idea of a right to be forgotten, unworkable as that probably is.

On the other hand, it's not all doom and gloom. Looking people up on Linkedin and Twitter before I meet them can give us a natural topic of conversation, something to connect about on a human level. This makes interactions much more pleasant than sticking to formal roles and stilted responses. It's also a way of figuring out who you're talking to and whether they have form.

This "handshake" used to require checking for letters after people's names or whether their tie had the pattern for a prestigious school or army regiment. A top-shelf education and experience in a demanding sector such as the military are no bad things to have, mind, but nowadays we can go a bit broader. Say someone didn't do well with formal education but they're a top Github contributor; they might be a better hire than the product of a degree mill. Or perhaps someone's name indicates they come from a different culture and have a different first language than you and your colleagues; in the past you might have dumped their CV, but now you can check out their writing online in your language and see whether it's up to scratch.

As with most things, social media has its positives and its negatives. Try to address the negatives (lock down your privacy settings, guard your passwords, careful where you browse) but don't lose sight of the many positives.