Social Network Profiles Grey the Personal/Professional Boundary

I got into a debate with Robert Scoble on my personal blog a couple of weeks ago. I pointed out the vast difference in the ways that we were using the online social network, Facebook. I even called him silly.

The truth is, in the past few weeks I’ve started to use Facebook the same way Scoble does. I’ve friended (and been friended by) a number of professional contacts. I even removed a few photos that I wasn’t sure people would take the right way. Robert doesn’t think those photos would have been a problem, but Wall Street Journal columnist Jared Sandberg seems to think differently. So do a number of the people he interviewed for his most recent column.

But “coolest self” photos are only part of the problem. As UCI anthropology professor Tom Boellstorff told Sandberg, “All these social relationships — apples and oranges — are getting crammed into one category of friends.”

I’ve always maintained that Facebook should allow people to create different profiles to display to the different categories of people in their lives. Rather than having different social networks for different parts of my life, I’d rather connect with all of my contacts in one place, but with a different emphasis depending on the type of contact.

I’m curious, how are you all using your social networking profiles? Professionally? Personally? Something in the middle?

And how do you judge professional contacts who share their personal photos on their social network profiles?