Personal Life and Professional Life: Never the Twain Shall Meet?

Email is easy.

1. I have my work email: scott.sheppard@autodesk.com.

2. I have my personal email: scott.sheppard@cox.net.

Laptops are easy.

1. I have my IBM ThinkPad for work. It is upstairs in my office.

2. I have my DELL Inspiron for personal use. It is downstairs in our bedroom. My wife uses that one too.

When it comes to social networking, things are not so easy.

1. I am scottsh115 on Twitter. My Twitter page is: http://www.twitter.com/scottsh115/. Most of my Tweets are about Autodesk Labs - not my so-called life.
2. I am scott.sheppard@autodesk.com on Facebook. Many of my personal life acquaintances are on Facebook. Autodesk Labs has a Project Showroom"publish a room to Facebook" feature. I routinely test it using my Facebook account.
3. I am scott.sheppard@autodesk.com on Linkedin. It's a pretty safe bet that this network is for business contacts.
4. I am scott.sheppard@cox.net on MySpace. My old MySpace page harkens back to my DWF days as it is http://www.myspace.com/beyond_the_paper.

The other day I read a posting where a woman said:

I enjoy discussing music with my friends. The other day I got a Facebook "friend request" from a work colleague who also likes music. I would love to add him to my list of friends. Although he's not my boss, he is in management. If I add him to my friends list, he will see how much of my work day I spend on Facebook.

I thought to myself, the problem is not where to draw the line between personal and professional.The problem is that you spend many working hours messing with Facebook. I do not have this problem.

Do any of you have your own rules for how you keep all of this straight? Let us know what you think at thelabs@autodesk.com.