CLT (career-limiting tweet)
Monday, March 23 2009
As acronyms go, “CLM” (career-limiting move) has been around for as long as I can remember. CLMs used to be simple – like popping off about your boss while waiting for a conference call to start, only to realize that the phone isn’t on ‘mute’ after all. But the wonder of technology is that there are now far more efficient ways to embarrass yourself with the Web and all of its cheap or free services, giving rise to terms like “Facebook fired”, referring to the ultimate penalty for naïvely thinking that your Facebook page & status updates are somehow partitioned away from the people that you’re offending. That was the case with Dan Leone, the lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fan who was fired from his dream job at Lincoln Financial Field after taking the Eagles to task on Facebook for not re-signing free agent safety Brian Dawkins. For the most part, social networks have the effect of combining your work and personal lives so your work chums know when you’re cleaning out your garage while your friends & family know when you’re traveling on business. Don’t get me wrong – there are lots of reasons is this a good thing – but it goes without saying that the CLM possibilities are seemingly endless.
A subset of the CLM has to be the CLT, the all-powerful ‘career-limiting tweet.’ The thing that’s most exciting about Twitter is that is seems to take self-inflicted wounds to new levels of ease and convenience, and in 140 characters or less. This is actually not a new phenomenon. One of the earliest examples of CLT dates back to April of 2007, when Edelman exec Steve Rubel posted this contribution to a discussion about useless print magazines: “PC Mag is another. I have a free sub but it goes in the trash”. Needless to say, PC Magazine Editor in Chief Jim Louderback was none too pleased, not to mention the 11 million readers of PC Magazine. Long story short, the eating of crow was complete with this open letter to Jim, apologizing profusely. Twitter was not used for the official apology, presumably because while you need only a 140 characters to get into trouble, you actually need to go back to your good ‘ol fashioned blog make things right again. A more recent (Jan 2009) CLT example comes from Ketchum VP James Andrews, who, upon leaving the Memphis airport en route to FedEx HQ to meet with 150+ folks from the worldwide communications group, tweeted the following: “True confession but i’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!’” FedEx employees (execs included) picked up on it and the brouhaha that followed was a steady, bi-directional drumbeat of measured, apologetic talking points and corporate-speak between Ketchum and their understandably appalled client. The latest CLT episode is chronicled in this article, and involves the newly-nicknamed “Cisco Fatty”, who posted this gem of a tweet: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Cisco, of course, sees this along with the Web community, who proceeds to “out” the once-anonymous newhire-to-be and shower him with a healthy dose of online ridicule. No word on whether or not the Cisco offer is still on the table.
Probably the biggest change here is the idea that the once-impenetrable barrier that existed between your personal life and your work life is more or less gone once you start attending to both of them online. Ripping into your least favorite co-worker in the privacy of a family dinner was always a safe endeavor (as long as you’re not working in the family business). Conversely, complaining about your in-laws at the water cooler was equally safe. Once those worlds collide, you need to think things through.
The paradox here is that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., etc. are all about sharing and transparency, but the reach they’re capable of is actually a disincentive to being 100% honest, as the cost of speaking your mind is simply not worth it, in terms of strained relationships, problems at work, etc. Oddly enough, there were a small number of folks who defended James Andrews after his FedEx gaffe, arguing that a.) Memphis is indeed a crummy place, b.) he was only being honest, and c.) punishing him for his blunder will only suppress the transparency that makes Twitter like, you know, the coolest thing ever. Dare to dream.
Anyway, one of two things will happen. Either the brutal honesty that seems to come so easily to people once they’re looking at a keyboard instead of another person will become so socially acceptable that the benefits simply outweigh the costs, and there will no longer be such a thing as a ‘career-limiting tweet’, or your social networking service will be reduced to a filtering device for only the subset of innermost thoughts and feelings that don’t get you in hot water at work or at home. In fact, given the common sense that most people apply to these things, I wonder what percentage of traffic on Twitter fits that description already…
