I’ve been thinking about the ever-increasing blurry line between public and private lives now that social media is mainstream.  I’ve personally been opening myself up to the world for about a decade; I started blogging by developing my own (very basic) blogging platform before the term “blog” was popular…and I haven’t looked back since then.

There have been a couple of times that I was alarmed by what people are capable of thinking or doing.  A few years ago I started getting anonymous comments on various videos of my children, asking me to pose them in certain ways or have them do certain things.  Naturally I deleted all traces of the videos online (yes it is possible) and became very aware of what I was posting after that.  Although I was always careful to never name them or reveal the location of my children even before this incident, I became very protective after that and have been quite conscious of what I would and would not publish.  Over the years I have become more widely known because of my marketing and social media work, and although I’m certainly a small fish in a big pond, I do have a lot of connections with people that I’ve never met face to face.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my social media life.  I’ve turned so many of my digital-first relationships into real-life relationships, and I love social media and the way it connects the world. But, and there is always a but…

Tweetdeck, the Adobe Air desktop app that I use for the majority of my online communication,published an update to version 0.33.00 today. They have included a lot of media previewing in the new release including media support for platforms like Flickr, Twitgoo and mobypicture.  My favorite new feature? Without a doubt a new way to delegate API calls.  Instead of being limited to 150/hour the new rate (thanks to OAuth authentication) is 350 calls per hour! In plain speak, this means that it is far more likely that you can make it through the day without seeing the dreaded “rate limit exceeded” error message.

Other nice tweaks include a fullscreen mode (PC only), the ability to record, share and watch videos clips integrated with YouTube and editable, real-time searches.

If you want a quick look at everything you are missing by not upgrading, the fine folks over at Tweetdeck were kind enough to make a 1:58 video detailing everything (embeded below).  Does anybody else find the name of the test account name they used in the video a little…odd?

If you are a Twitter user but haven’t jumped into the Tweetdeck arena, I urge you to try it out.  It’s free, runs on most platforms without issues, and makes sorting and organizing information pretty simple.

Since I oversee or run large corporate social media accounts and the company I work for is responsible for dozens of Fortune 500 brands, stories like this make me cringe.

Earlier today, the very large, very well known UK mobile company Vodafone posted an incredibly inappropriate tweet on their official company Twitter account.  It said VodafoneUK  ”is fed up of dirty homo’s and is going after beaver“.

Ummm….

Needless to say, this is not something that any company would want published on their behalf.  I don’t know if Vodafone runs their social programs through an agency or internally, but either way it’s obvious that there was a breakdown of protocol.  I suspect one of two probable scenarios that would lead to something like this.  First, it’s possible that it is a disgruntled employee that was either on their way out the door already or was ready to be fired, because certainly somebody is getting disciplined for this.  Second, and what I think is more likely, is that a single dashboard was being used (perhaps something like CoTweet) to update business and personal accounts.

They responded in what I think is the best possible way: acknowledging it and apologizing profusely all day long on their Twitter account.  Many companies would be tempted to delete the tweet and then pretend it never happened, refusing to reply to anybody that pointed it out.  I’m glad Vodafone has taken this approach, but I also hope they will tell us how the “severe breach of rules” happened so that all of us can learn from this mistake.

Community managers take note: be extremely careful with your updates, and don’t mix up your personal and corporate updates!