Social Circles

Image via Wikipedia

Combining business with pleasure/social activities often has a negative outcome, the equivalent is introducing online to the real world as this can also be difficult to balance. The introduction consisted of work colleagues meeting my partner for the first time and admittedly I was anxious how the two would collide.

Social Networking has changed the way we interact and increased our social circle to involve many people we don't know on a personal level. This makes introductions to friends-of-friends familiar as we basically know each other but just don't coexist in the same circles. I don't use Lists on Facebook so accepting friend requests provides 'friends' with the transparency of both my online and real world identities.

From the feeds and stories I submit back to the newsfeed to photos from my children's birthdays, Christmas and holidays etc. These photos and wall posts shape the view of how my online relationships are perceived and across my network this creates a virtual introduction albeit through proxy!

My partner arrived at my office and as has become the normality for Friday afternoon we moved onto a Bar. The evening went really well and my friends informed me that it was surreal meeting someone for the first time that they had become so familiar with online. I trust my friends but it does raise the question over how much we're exposing our lives.

What are your views about your online identity? Do you use Lists on networking sites to separate your social circles? Should the evolution of image based social networking sites like Facebook allow for us to blur our tagged photos for added privacy? Thoughts?