Blazek was over the line, but there is a point to be made about LinkedIn etiquette

A two-part moral for the day: in a digital age, never put in writing anything that you don't want uploaded to the internet and get to know the etiquette of the social media platforms that you're using.

These are lessons learned in no uncertain terms by Kelly Blazek, the co-founder of the Cleveland Job Bank, an organisation set up to help job-hunters in the US city.

Last month, Blazek was contacted by twentysomething university graduate Diana Mekota, who had just relocated to the city and was seeking employment.

Having made an initial contact with the Job Bank, Mekota followed up by requesting a connection to Blazek on professional social network LinkedIn.  She received the following response:

Image via Imgur

While this is stunningly rude and overly aggressive, if you can slice your way through the rhetoric, Blazek makes a point; why should strangers expect to connect to your networks on LinkedIn?

Unlike other social network which require no real effort to build personal connections, LinkedIn is a professional platform and it takes time and effort to properly cultivate a robust, useful network of connections.

Once you have accepted on LinkedIn, they can view and contact your connections, creating the digital equivalent of photocopying your contacts book (kids, ask your parents).

Many LinkedIn users will have spent considerable time building their digital networks through real-world interactions, attending seminars, conferences and networking events and eating innumerable canapes.

Contacting strangers on LinkedIn is frowned upon, specifically because it enables them to mine your contacts without having done any legwork.  Worse still, they could sour relationships with both long-standing and freshly minted business contacts by dropping your name into their (potentially unwelcome) introduction.

If I receive a request from someone that I don't know, I send them back a short, polite request to remind me of how and when we met. Unsurprisingly, many of them fade into the online ether, never to be heard from again.

However, there is also a balance to be struck: if you completely shut yourself off from the prospect of engaging and connecting with strangers, then you might just miss that key opportunity to bring new business into your organisation, or miss the perfect job opportunity being offered by a recruiter.

As an addendum it should be noted that Blazek's pugnacious and surly response forced her to make a public apology, close her Twitter account and delete her blog posts as well as hand back her Communicator of the Year award, details of which can be found here.

Think before you Tweet: a cautionary tale

Peaches Geldof is potentially in some very hot water indeed.

The daughter of Boomtown Rat Sir Bob, Peaches is facing a potential contempt of court for tweeting the names of two women who allowed Ian Watkins, former singer with the band Lost Prophets, to abuse their children.

The act of tweeting these women’s names to her 160,000 followers is enough that Geldof could find herself facing up to two years in prison, should the Crown Prosecution Service opt to make an example of her and use the full extent of the law.

While you can understand Geldof’s actions - as a mother herself, the shocking actions of Watkins must raise particular levels of bile – they are still in contravention of the law.   

The victims of sexual crimes are granted anonymity for life under the British judicial system. The protection of their identities is sacrosanct and extends to the prevention of publication of any details that could lead to the identification of these people.  Clearly, naming these women could quite easily lead to the identification of the children.

Peaches Geldof

Far from being a stand-alone incident, this is just the latest in a string of examples of people – both celebrities and ordinary Janes and Joes like you or I – who have broken the law by making often flippant or emotionally-fuelled remarks on social media.

With an increasing number of people taking to social media, the risk of poorly worded or ill-considered tweets being in contravention of the law is on the rise.

Take, for instance, Sally Bercow the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.  Mrs Bercow landed herself at the centre of a litigation brought by Lord Alastair McAlpine through her ‘irresponsible use of twitter’.

Her tweet was, of course, subsequently retweeted by some of her 56,000 followers, further spreading the libellous message.

When I was studying for a journalism degree at university, the majority of the second year was given over to provide an understanding of the theory and practice of media law, so I feel comfortable that I’m not going to accidentally defame anyone.

This is, however, clearly not a practical solution to an ongoing problem; people have neither the time nor the inclination to get to grips with the finer points of libel law before sending their first tweets (whether they should is a different conversation for a different time).

Social networks provide us with outlets through which we can broadcast our successes and frustrations and just as in the real world, these often come without the benefit of a filter. 

Particularly in the case of events such as those surrounding Watkins, we can feel that an expression of our anger or frustration across social networks would be no more damaging than to do so with our friends in the pub.

There is an epilogue to this story, featuring another musician called Ian Watkins, although he may be more familiar to many as ‘H’ from the pop band Steps.

A tale of two Watkins. 'H' is on the left. 

Not only has he had to suspend his Twitter account due to the outpouring of misguided abuse from those not careful or willing enough to check that they had the right Ian Watkins, but the US entertainment website E! published his image in error as part of a story on the on-going trial.

The message, therefore, is clear: spare a thought for what you type into that little box on Twitter, because as we are all now publishers so too do we all fall under the auspices of the courts.

This blog was originally written by Dan for the Core Marketing website.

Five websites to refocus your mind

We all know what it’s like: you’re sitting at your desk, eyes unfocused, staring vaguely through your monitor, one hand resting languidly on your mouse.  You’ve been concentrating on a problem for so long that it no longer makes any sense and you’re experiencing disquieting visions of the future.

This is the time to refocus your mind!

The amount of time that we spend at work has been growing steadily and significantly for the last two decades. Alongside time that we’re physically spending at our desks, we’re also working harder. 

And there really is only so much Red Bull that a body can take.

So what’s the most effective way of clearing your mind to refocus on a problem? Simply put: doing something pointless and pleasant.

The following five websites all fall into that category, providing a series of brief distractions that require very little brain power. It’s like giving your grey cells a sit-down.

Of course, everything should be done in moderation and I need to make it clear (probably for some sort of legal reason) that you should only undertake these activities for a couple of minutes.

This is not an alternative to finalising the figures for the Johnson account.

1 Fly a Line
http://www.barcinski-jeanjean.com/entries/line3d/

There’s something weirdly captivating about Fly A Line. The little line follows your mouse as you move it around, enabling you to swoop it back and around itself in intricate spirals and knots. 

2 Pointer Pointerhttp://www.pointerpointer.com/

It’s the simplicity of this website that makes it so captivating. Leave your mouse in one position on the screen and the next image that comes up will feature someone pointing at your mouse. No no, this isn’t witchcraft, just a clever algorithm.  The real beauty of this site though is the choice of photos. Go on, give it a go.

3 Koalas to the max!http://www.koalastothemax.com/

If any of these selections have got an ‘objective’, then this is it. Move your cursor over each circle to make it ‘pop’ into four more.  That’s it, keep going…

4 Paint a Nebula
http://29a.ch/sandbox/2011/neonflames/

For the more creative amongst us who just can’t find a legitimate reason to bring in their canvas and oils.  Select a colour, drag your mouse across an area of the black screen in front of you and populate a multi-coloured nebula of your own creation.  It’s sort of Bob Ross meets Brian Cox.

5 Weave Silkhttp://weavesilk.com/

Perhaps my favourite and the most complicated, Weave Silk lets you create captivating geometric shapes and patterns from a wide selection of colours. Changing the settings for how many folds in a rotation, whether the pattern is mirrored across the centre or spirals outwards adds additional design dimensions.

It’s like your Spirograph went to Woodstock and never came back.

DISCLAIMER: Please remember that this is not intended to offer you an alternative to getting up from your desk and moving around. In fact, it is highly recommended that you spend some time away from your desk during the day!

Now get back to work!