About Face on Facebook

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Earlier this month, I commented on a previous posting of mine that the mixing of personal and professional life that seems to happen on Facebook leaves me a little... (hmm, how did I put it?)

Squirmy!

I'm rethinking that one and I'm a big enough person to admit it publicly.

I've been spending quite a bit of time on Facebook lately, with both friends and colleagues (many of whom are both). It was one of those colleagues-slash-friends that read my earlier posting and actually "un-friended" me. He feared that I felt put on the spot to be his FB friend knowing we're colleagues, as well.

Now I feel like a bad friend, not just on Facebook, but in real life, as well.

I've also had a change of heart realizing it is okay to let people you deal with professionally know that you're a real person; with cute kids who likes the Dixie Chicks, historical fiction, has 42 friends in almost as many cities around the country and went a little nuts recently with yearbookyourself.com.

I often point to David Packard, Sr. and Bill Hewlett for what I think was actually their most important contribution to Corporate America. Hint: it wasn't a calculator or an oscillator (Walt Disney bought eight of their early models to use in what was then a unique surround sound system for its movie, Fantasia).

Packard and Hewlett made Corporate America a lot less corporate. They called it The HP Way; business casual dress, Friday afternoon employee beer busts, open door policies with the top brass and open cubicles; not to dehumanize employees, but rather to mingle them together in hopes they'd be more human, instead of less.

Maybe Facebook is picking up where they left off.

Renee Oricchio

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987.