NonTweeters Beware

Tom Froemski at ZDNet poses a provocative opinion about those who fail to join the social networking movement to tweet, blog, edit wikis and comment on anything digital: "You might not have much of a viable future."

From his blog:

To become an influencer requires building a large social network, or a small network of large influencers.

Either way, it requires good online communications skills, a willingness to share part of yourself, and to spend a fair amount of time engaged in sharing. In other words, you can't be shy, a wilting violet.

So what happens if you are shy? What happens if you don't have a Twitter account and Twitt incessantly? or spend hours sharing on Facebook or LinkedIn, or blog? What happens if you don't like engaging in these social networks like all those self-promoters out there? Then you might not have much of a viable future....

Could the same happen to federal employees? In a directive, President Obama has ordered agencies to begin reaching out to the public to collect their input on government business. Federal managers, for the most part, aren't big social networking aficionados, however. Could the number of tweets, blog entries and wiki posts become part of an employee's performance review? The intelligence community is, in a manner of speaking, headed that way.