Anonymity in Blogging - can you be yourself [londongirlgeekdinner] Friday, December 01, 2006
Looks like I wasn't alone in my comments on the speakers. Ian over at Cubicgarden has posted the video's and his own thoughts. He's even got a video snippet of me asking a question about whether anonymity is acceptable in blogging!
I was prompted to ask this mainly because a great blog called "Dead 2.0" went off air after its writer who wrote anonymously, was threatened with having their "identity revealed". According to rumour, this author worked for a Web 2.0 company and his personal opinions on his blog might have reflected on the employer.
Its one thing to have a conflict of interest which you deliberately conceal or to use anonymity to be abusive (why do people leave comments as "anonymous" - why not use your real name?). Its completely separate and acceptable IMHO to voice personal views "outside of work hours" using an alternate identity simply because most people can't diffuse corporate & personal personas.
Looking back to when I was Board Director of a big brokerage, I know I had to bite my tongue simply to bow to the corporate position the latter of which usually involved not offering an opinion on anything lest we either stood out or offended. Yet generally people do business with people; its impossible to be permanently false, so your true self will out eventually. Indeed, this is a conversation we have with entrepreneurs every time we hear a pitch from them - don't act like you think we'd want you to be in the meeting; just be who you are because we could be together for a long time and its better we both know who each other really is upfront because it gets horrible later otherwise.
Thankfully, I don't have the same corporate chains on these days thanks to some very understanding partners.
posted by John Wilson @ 10:05 AM Permanent Link
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