Did I just tweet that?

Saying the wrong thing is so much easier these days. There was a day when you could only stick your foot in your mouth in person, or on the phone. Now we're making fools of ourselves without even thinking about it, in more ways than we would like. Google Latitude, Gowalla, Foursquare, and Loopt will tell all of our friends where we are, sometimes when we don't want anyone else to know. You may not want your future employer knowing how often you visit certain establishments. Blippy will tell everyone what we're buying with our credit cards, and how much we're paying. Facebook can lead to all kinds of problems, and Twitter lets people speak their minds far too easily.

These services aren't inherently bad for your reputation, but anyone can fall victim, and most everyone does. I created a Facebook group 6 years ago called "The CPA club." The group promoted the use of Casual Professional Apparel - we wore ties and/or blazers with blue jeans. This seems harmless, but could be interpreted as mocking Certified Professional Accountants. That was never the intent - I started wearing ties to try to look the part when I took my first accounting exam - but I may never get the chance to tell my side of the story. I have written blog posts expressing my opinion about various products and philosophies, and now Google Buzz makes my comments on other peoples' blog post public to the world (if I tell it to). I'm not ashamed of the things I've written online, but some of them could be taken the wrong way.

And I'm not alone. Apple leaked information about the fabled existence of it's tablet. Technology blogs and news sites alike were in a frenzy to tell us what the tablet would do, the dimensions, the apps, the price, the name, the size, and everything else, up to a year before they were even sure Apple would produce such a gadget. The hype was amazing, fueled mainly by these blogs, and other social media. And the result was disappointing. Most of the blogs called the iPad nothing more than a big iPhone. All the digital press was great up to the release date, now more than half of the digital press has been negative. This could have been avoided by lessening the hype, leaking less information, and leaking it closer to the release date. The iPad appears to be a good product, but no product could live up to the hype that the iPad had.

A smaller problem happened with Google. One of their employees stopped in the crosswalk in front of Michael Arrington's (founder of TechCrunch) car, refusing to let him pass. The reason: Arrington was using his cell phone while driving, which is against the law in California. Arrington snapped a picture with his phone, and wrote a post about the ordeal. Probably not too many people know about this, but the people that do know, the people that follow the TechCrunch blog, are the type of people that Google would want to hire. I am still a huge fan of Google, but I think this Googler took the "Don't Be Evil" mantra a little too far. This is difficult to avoid, but it is important to remind employees not to do anything controversial or potentially offensive while acting as an employee of the company (i.e. wearing name badges or uniforms).

Recently MySpace has attempted several social media strategies to regain prominence online, including making its own site more social. Unfortunately, the online response to these attempts are basically that MySpace is floundering; some blogs say the site is already dead. In this case, MySpace is being criticized for trying too hard. It would have been better to just focus on core competencies (music discovery), and not try to become Facebook.

Disclaimer: These are merely my opinions and observations. In no way do I intend to demean or damage the reputation of any of these companies.