How Social Networking Sites Can Get You Fired and Why?

I will start with the story straight up.

Kimberley Swann, a 16-year-old girl from Clacton-On-Sea in Essex, began working as an office administrator for Ivell Marketing & Logistics at the beginning of February. She began posting short comments about her job on her Facebook profile, such as “first day at work. omg!! So dull!!”, “all i do is shred holepunch n scan paper!!! omg!” and “‘im so totally bord!!!”  What Swann didn’t realize is that her employer, Stephen Ivell, found her comments when he presumably discovered and accessed her profile. On Feb. 27, Ivell called Swann into his office and fired her on the spot. Ivell handed her a letter which said, “Following your comments made on Facebook about your job and the company we feel it is better that, as you are not happy and do not enjoy your work, we end your employment with Ivell Marketing & Logistics with immediate effect.”

Now what seems to be just another unusual firing, isn’t so if you have a close look at the perspectives.

1. The employer was almost prying in to Kimberley’s profile. And as she said,

They were just being nosy, going through everything. I think it is really sad, it makes them look stupid that they are going to be so petty.

Do you think she has a point?

2. Again no professional ethics lets you talk about your company to anyone. However close. There have been cases where people were fired for blogging or bad mouthing about their companies in the past.

3. Should one say, that its one of my personal opinions and I am entitled to have one or is it that even minor issues can not be taken into personal space?

4. Moreover, do we really need to know the difference between private social networking and public social networking?

There are many half baked issues which are to be answered and drawn a clear line to. What is your opinion? Write to us. We are waiting for you to put in your views in this debate.