Arianna brings something up that I don’t think a lot of us worry about. She says (about the Van Jones scandal where he allowed himself to be associated with the 9/11 Truther movement by signing their petition):
If the sliming of Van Jones is an indication of how things are going to be, a lot of 20-somethings posting to their Facebook pages as we speak better start worrying about the digital crumbs they are leaving behind for the future Glenn Becks of the world.
I remember right after 9/11 signing all sorts of anti-war petitions, visiting the Loose Change website and consuming other wacky points of view – completely without regard to the breadcrumbs I left behind.
Maybe that’s why Organic is asking, “Does Your CEO Really Need to Be on Facebook?“:
It’s a huge debate around the Organic circle and it doesn’t appear many CEOs are. Out of the 2009′s Fortune-100, only 19 (gasp) have a personal Facebook page. But don’t go shaking fingers just yet. What I found even more shocking was that only two had Twitter accounts — one of which has ZERO tweets.[1] Wait. I’m not done. None had blogs.
I’m sure a lot of them don’t feel the reward is worth the penalty for one false move. The thing is that I DON’T think I’ll be like that for us 20-somethings [barely!!!] when we get older. I think the penalty for a social-web misstep (even for politicians) will be akin to putting your foot in your mouth. It won’t destroy you, unless you’re calling people Macacca, because we’ll all have done it at one point or another.
Today not everyone has published a book or has a regular newspaper column, so when we see a “gotcha” moment in the written word we seize upon it – even the digitally printed word. But we’re all blogging/tweeting/updating our Facebook status. And pretty soon the hypocrite-bell will go off in our own heads when we try to condemn someone else for what digital breadcrumbs they’ve left behind in their 20s because we’ll remember the really whack shit we did way back when. I guess it just sucks for Van Jones.