The allure of Twitter is getting harder and harder to overlook, but many workers are still hesitant to fully participate. Social media is often viewed as a distraction in the workplace. Making your tweets public is like giving your boss a minute-by-minute record of your distraction level. Do you really want to chance using Twitter at work?
Besides the whole not-working-at-work stigma, Twitter can potentially lead to other problems as well. Although you may try hard to keep your tweets professional and clean, you never know how someone else might interpret them. What you think is smart and funny may be a total turn-off to someone else. Self-employed workers must be careful to avoid offending potential clients as well. There’s a certain level of risk to be sure. You have to find a way to be smart about it.
So how do you handle Twitter in the workplace? Do you tweet at work? Do you choose to keep your profile private? Or do you think these concerns are not really that big a deal?
Yeah….I have a terrible time handling both twitter and work…But somehow, consciously avoiding Twitter during peak work hours does help a bit… There was a month or two when I couldn’t do anything except be on Twitter. And I was not tweeting, just reading the people I follow.
Another issue with Twitter is it is difficult to know how much following count is too much…. and that is where you have to be attentive about it. Otherwise, having to read like 600 people in a day is just sick! I have trouble reading just 150-odd people.
But avoiding Twitter at work is a no no! There is no way I’m going to leave out a great source of knowledge just because i’m spending the deducted time at work.
Since my boss doesn’t actually have a twitter although he is aware of what it is and I manage the company twitter I’m sure he doesn’t mind me tweeting from my personal account as well.
I use tweet deck when I’m at work a few times a day, and sometimes when we go out to lunch my boss will comment on a tweet I made about something. My boss at my current internship is a pretty cool guy so he doesn’t mind as long as it doesn’t distract me from my work.
actually the problem is not about tweeting .. it is about reading tweets ..
thank god my boss doesnt know my account but my coworkers do …
what consumes my time is just reading tweets ..
its good that there is lists .. so the user can prioritize and categorize his tweets …
I totally try to avoid twitter at work, it’s just overwhelming. Too big of a distraction. Maybe opening it up 2-3 times during work to check for mentions or dms and thats all 🙂