Given that my job requires my team to be responsible for interacting with a community (developers) that is social savvy, I have been wondering the implications of the same on my personal participation in social media.

The recent 1000 heads article (Leading by example) provided some serious food for thought.

Clearly, we  “listen” to the social media. As a company, we do respond too. So, then it is about personal involvement.

The article discusses the pros and cons pretty well. Personally, I think the final decsion is going to be based on whether I add value to the conversation. Not all topics that I am interested in following are necessarily my area of expertise. So I would not join in based on my “role”, but much rather on whether my expertise is in line with the topic.

While it is not possible to totally disregard the company/role dimension, joining in only in specific areas of expertise makes it more personal than corporate.