Your permanent record
Scoble has some points about the politics and PR surrounding the Edwards campaign's hiring/firing/whatever is going on over there of two bloggers. I'm not going to talk about the politics of this - simply the PR aspects. Anyone blogging should recognize something very, very simple: you remember that "permanent record" your guidance counselors mentioned back in high school? Well, you didn't really have one then, but you do now.
One of Scoble's points stands out from the rest to me:
If you want a job as a blogger for a political organization, or a business, you better worry about all those “out there” posts you made.
Define "out there" as you will - what matters is how other people will take your comments. Here's a simple test: if you would feel embarrassed saying it in front of your mother, it's probably a bad idea to post it.
Along with that, I have a not too "out there" prediction: One, two, maybe three decades from now, political candidates and rising business executives are going to start getting whacked upside the head by things they are posting (or that other people are posting about them) now. People of my generation had it easier - the stupid stuff we did in college is well and truly buried.
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Comments
I'm gonna have to disagree
[Troy Brumley] February 8, 2007 9:24:09.127
One thing to remember is that values and opinions about these sorts of things are relative, and 20 years from now the people judging such things will have grown up with myspace and its ilk, and probably have their own skeletons floating around on the internet.
And...
[ James Robertson] February 8, 2007 9:40:31.575
Comment by James Robertson
I have no way of knowing how relevant those skeletons will be. What I do know is this: Unlike our generation, whose skeletons exist only in memory, this generation's skeletons will be well documented and findable in Google (or the equivalent 20 years from now).
PR
[Katerin] February 9, 2007 12:41:58.414
I don't see where the permanent record idea is an issue here, as Edwards hired them based on their permanent record. All the supposed controversy is based on the contents of their blogs, which was the whole reason for hiring them as campaign bloggers. If he's suddenly realizing that he doesn't like what they've said, that's not a problem with a surprising revelation of someone's public record but rather a problem of him not actually reading it. However, if he did like their blogs, letting his political opponents control who he employs is foolish.