Not that I don’t like social networks, but I see no use for them in my personal life. I use Twitter for business reasons mainly, like advertising my upcoming training “JavaScript for Java Developers“, which doesn’t prevent me from posting a photo of two salmon heads that I was about to use for fish soup. Java developers eat fish too, and these fish heads could start a small talk with someone, who could decide to enroll in my training later.
I have an account on LinkedIn, which, hopefully, one day will bring me some business opportunity other than these annoying emails “I want to add you to my professional network”. I have an account on Facebook (everybody does), but my main activity there is denying requests to become friends (is this wrong? did they bring business to anyone?).
As any citizen of an industrialized country where people don’t need to hunt for food, I live in two worlds – virtual and real. The question is, “Do I need to merge these worlds or should keep them apart?” Take a look at this image.
See a handsome face on 15F? You guessed it right – it’s me! No, I was not using Photoshop – everything happened naturally. I booked an airplane ticket with a European airline and got an email from them suggesting to pick a seat and use my FaceBook or LinkedIn account to identify myself, which I did. This is how my pretty face got into the seat 15F. The next question is if it was a smart or stupid thing to do? Initially, I selected 15F hoping that the flight won’t be fully booked, and no one will want to take the seat in the middle (15C), and I’ll have some extra room during my flight to Europe.
But now, after identifying myself, most likely some 300-pound LinedIn aficionado will take 15C on purpose even if we’re not connected just yet. No thank you very much. I’m not going to take chances. In the virtual world I can easily ignore annoying people, but being trapped with an unknown talkative facebooker for 8 hours doesn’t seem too appealing to me. Luckily, this airline let me delete my LinkedIn profile from the seat map, so I’m flying incognito, yay!
Update. Two weeks after I wrote this blog, I ran into an interesting TED talk by Sherry Turkle “Connected or being alone.” She found the right words explaining why I decided not to put mu face into that airplane: We want a controlled communication, which could be screwed up should I allow someone from the virtual world sit next to me.
yakovfain.com 
Disagreed. It’s a business trip, and a lot of fun/interesting interactions can be had. Few conferences that allowed “social networking” prior to the trip were way more productive as they allowed better interaction/less wasted time. Best way to circumvent unwanted interaction as well as pick up business is to fly business class. Used mostly by personal services professional it works for boring software pros/entrepreneurs as well. Use your linkedin account there. You will be surprised how many interesting people are out there. For economy cabin use facebook profile – be ready to have multiple.
I’d prefer if airlines would offer upgrades to business class for certain people form LinkedIn. This way business class would really mean business 🙂
Wow, so you have the option nowadays to choose who you want to sit next to on an airplace? I find the idea remarkable, although you might lose a sense of privacy, especially if you’re image/seat is associated to your LinkedIn or Facebook profile. I’m not sure I’d want that (what if you have some programmer stalker out there), but if it could “just” be a headshot/photo, that might be nice. Of course, any attractive females will probably fill the seats next to them pretty quickly. Hmm, maybe it’s not a good idea afterall…