A new staple in our lives, social networking has developed into an enormous aspect of our every day communication, blurring the lines between personal and professional. Facebook, has turned into an obsession and already is impacting our social behavior. Whether inside the work avenues, school, malls, parks and almost every corner of the earth, more than 500 million users would take time to update their status in Facebook or post shout-outs to microblogging site such as Twitter. Clearly, it crosses some professional boundaries here and there. But, should we really separate business and personal presence online? Like an alter-ego? Or, should we keep it all in one and use our networks for marketing? Different companies have varied takes on this issue.

Managing the boundaries across policies, practices and technology still raise some questions. Trends around personal and private overlap put on the table various judgments. A good example is when people are asked to collaborate with external vendors or even internal peers via Google docs. You actually use your own account to be utilized for work. Other companies, to maintain corporate identity, block most social networking sites. Some other businesses embrace Twitter, Facebook and the likes wholeheartedly. Crowdsourcing has recently added a spice to the usual gathering of perspectives online. It is particularly structured to create a valuable approach on corporate social responsibility and relations. With rave reviews over crowd sourcing, companies are now experimenting in getting insights from their customers, thereby, allowing employees to utilize social media and personally gather feedback.

Having these things in mind, you would expect industry giants would be the first ones to lay down detailed policies to straighten out gray areas on overlapping business and personal online presence. Intel has outlined comprehensive rules of engagement and social media guidelines for all employees. An Intel employee is encouraged to use his real name if he is blogging about the company, taking into consideration the privacy and confidentiality clause implemented by the organization. Hewlett-Packard has their unique version of blogging code of conduct. They are open to the idea of employee participation in blogging and social networks to harness feedback, and be a venue to educate consumers on products and services they offer. But just the same, it should be aligned with the overall business conduct set forth within HP.

Facebook, being modern day’s pillar of social media, has been involved directly and indirectly in some interesting cases as to how employers handle and deal with employees’ information in public. Numerous companies are now clinging to Facebook to conduct background checks on their new hires. This trend also inspired Social Intelligence Corp. to come up with a product line that will explore the web and look for potential risks of applicants. This is a discreet way of doing such investigations. But for Maryland Division of Corrections, it is more blatant. During Robert Collins, a resident of the state, was asked to disclose his Facebook password during a re-certification interview. For obvious reasons, this case has sparked debates and authorities have stepped into the matter.

While more and more organizations are okay with the idea of personal social networks crossing professional borders, it is still essential to keep a differentiation. Having said this, there are two outstanding tools that will make this happen: big data analysis and semweb technology. These analytics will be required to delineate data. SAP’s Unified Infrastructure is bound to be the future of compelling analytics. Businesses won’t be able to tell if web content is personal or professional just because it comes from Facebook, or Twitter or a blog.

VMware is lending technological advances towards this as well, creating mobile software to separate personal and professional data on a single device.  Citrix, on the other hand, is taking a widespread mobile approach to create secure environments that will work on various devices, noting the changing work force structure that’s become more fluid, attuned to personal needs, and far more mobile.