This post was cross posted from my hyperbored blog but I thought it was applicable here too.
As Facebook has grown to become the dominant social network a strange thing has happened: My World’s are colliding.
Some people are uncomfortable with the mix of personal and work life that Facebook has come to represent. That isn’t a problem for me. I am who I am and I have nothing to hide. But as someone who has reinvented himself every 5 years or so, leaving one “world” to create another for myself I never expected any of those worlds to meet. I sometimes worry that matter and anti matter will touch and I’ll cease to exist.
Here are the many different worlds which not only collide in my account but sometimes even within the comments of my status updates.
My Family
This consists of three very distinct factions
My Mom’s Side:
This is my mom’s side of the family. They are matriarchal (because all the men seem to die, doesn’t bode well for me), extremely ADD (13 grandsons and everyone of us has pretty major ADHD) and I love them for all of their quirks. It’s because of my mom and her family that I am the person I am today. I love them dearly.
My Wife’s Side:
My wife’s family is about as normal a family you can get. They’re loving, never fight, kind and caring (at least that what I’m told normal families are supposed to be like).
My Dad’s Side:
I never knew my dad’s side of the family. They were the water to my mom’s oil family. Which is probably part of the reason my parents eventually divorced. Quirky to be sure but a bit of an unknown quantity. There’s also my father’s newest franchise, my step siblings. They’re considerably younger than I am (his youngest daughter is the same age as my oldest daughter) and just now starting to join Facebook. It’s a little awkward.
My Career Lives
I say lives because I’ve had multiple career’s and they are starting to collide.
Boise’s Social Media Pioneer:
Besides being a partner at a small DOA marketing agency, attempting a few startups, and being the EIR at Highway 12 Ventures, I was “that guy” in Boise. I was the first one to really start evangelizing social media (then called new media). There were a handful of us doing it and a few more who “got it” and were using it, but I think it’s safe to say that I was the one screaming the loudest from the tallest soap box. I started and helped start many tech/social groups in Boise like The WaterCooler (an incubator/cowork space), TechBoise (a blog and monthly events), IgniteBoise and other things. Leaving Boise was hard but I knew I would keep my connections. In fact this is probably still the largest group of Facebook friends.
Social Media Professional:
All of the above Boise activity was counter pointed by being one of the few dedicated social media people at HP. There are even more now but at the time there were only a few of us. This is where I really started to gain traction on the larger social media stage. I was gaining real enterprise/brand experience and getting recognized for my work. Most of my friends from this space aren’t actually HP employees, they are the people I met during this time and still interact with mostly on Twitter and at conferences. Most of these people duplicate their Facebook and Twitter updates so my Facebook interactions are pretty limited.
Seattle Social Media:
The last group really bleeds over into this next group. While the last group is more industry wide the Seattle group is it’s own distinct flavor. As an active participant in the Social Media Club (when I’m in town) and a board member of Seattle’s Social Media Breakfast this group is growing as I become more integrated into Seattle.
Skateshop Owner:
This is by far the most interesting group of Facebook friends. Many of you know that I used to own a skateboard shop in Las Vegas. This was ~6-7 years ago. The best marketing tool I had was a MySpace page. It worked beautifully. Every skater in Las Vegas was on MySpace, I really didn’t need anything else. When I sold the shop and moved back to Boise and got back in to marketing/communications I started blogging and then using Twitter a lot more and started using MySpace only for finding new bands. I left that life behind and all of those friends with it. But as Facebook grows and MySpace dies these fringe early adopters have been making their way over to Facebook where I’ve slowly been reforming friendships.
While it’s a little weird at times it’s also why I love social media so much. It’s turned my life into one big mashup.
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