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Andrea Coombes, the assistant personal finance editor at MarketWatch, contacted me last week through my blog for an article she was writing about use of Facebook for personal vs. professional networking, issues for employees and possible concerns for employers. We had a great discussion; it was good talking with someone who had spent some time in Facebook herself, and wasn’t just writing about some unfamiliar phenomenon.

Andrea wrote two articles that appeared online today: the first, On a need-to-know-everything basis, is a balanced review of pros and cons of the top three networking sites for professionals: Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. The sidebar has six Tips for staying safe in social networking sites.

Here are a few of the posts on my blog that deal with topics I discussed with Andrea. I said employers developing social media policies should ask their employees to make their geographic network primary, and their company affiliation secondary. I said it is myopic (a little medical lingo there) for companies to block Facebook access at work. (In Andrea’s article, Charlene Li agrees.) And we also talked extensively about Facebook’s limited profile, and how that can be used to provide less personal information to professional colleagues than you share with family and friends. With various levels of “friends” on the way, it will soon become easier to distinguish between people with whom your bare your soul and those with whom you chat about “Da Bears.”

My Facebook Business page has all of my Facebook-related posts gathered in one place. If you like what you see here, you can subscribe to my RSS feed, get updates by email, Friend me in Facebook, or follow me in Twitter to get notification when I write something new.

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Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

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