It is actually kind about holding up personal information. You don’t use your own voice in the newspaper, if you are a writer. You don’t share of yourself, you are telling someone else’s story. Gillian has been very deep in the culture of being very private.

Something like 70% of women who go online don’t use their actual real name. Rebecca began only as miss604. It wasn’t until she got married that she put her married name. She has photos online out there.

Used to be incredibly private with her online life. Through working with the character she’s become more open. Part of that is because Emme is telling a story, and we tell all of her most embarrassing moments online.

Erica - The first thing a hiring person can do is look at the Facebook profile and/or the online presence. He looks at it from the perspective of “is there anything there that would ever provide concern to the side of the professional life”. So far, there isn’t.

Gillian – As the columnist, you can have an opinion. You’re putting your name out there as an editorial. You CAN have an opinion. As reporters you’re supposed to provide a balanced coverage, you are supposed to be telling both sides of the story. You have to bear that in mind. When I write about online security and online reputation a rule of thumb is – don’t put anything out there that you would mind reading on the front page of the newspaper.

A politician that tweets something indiscreet or off-the-mark it’s out there, on the record, searchable and you can’t take it back. During the election, Gillian followed the election and what candidates were doing re: tech/social media. But she never ever said “I think Candidate A is a moron” because exaclty that, she can be next week the political reporter and your credibility is kind of destroyed. If you come out with an opinion and then try to step back and pretend that you’re telling a balanced story.

Rebecca – There’s not so much a separation between Miss604 and Rebecca, but she does filter what she says out there. She would show a balanced viewpoint. If something is really negative, she will not say “they sucked” - she’ll highlight the good points and that’s about it. It’s just kind of filtering what she says so that it is respectable, it is credible. It’s still what she feels but not what is going to be haunting anybody.

Mixing the online and personal identities so that they’re stand up. What she wants to have out there. Make sure that somebody doesn’t take a photo or don’t put it publicly.

If you are saying something in the online sphere and somebody gets a hold of that. If you really need to take it out of your chest, just call a friend.

When you put on a costume you don’t have control over whether things are misplaced, etc. But if they come from a professional space, that photographer would never have another job in a fashion set. That’s what creates these problems. Not all of us have the same ethics. It’s scary.

If we don’t do it ourselves, do I as PR firm need to say that? Have I gone too far by not providing a Social Media Guidelines thing.

It is indeed a learning curve in this new space.

1) People always say that people are talking about you whether or not. You might as well have the official message. One thing that Rebecca did was own some of the negative sides. Make sure that the positive message first and the negative message.

2) Negative comments – as Raul said, you set the tone on your site. You can tell that his readers feel the same way. It’s this whole thing.

Erica - I think you have a responsibility. Sometimes that thing can happen without you necessarily meaning for it to happen. We sometimes run into these issues with Emme. Sometimes basically people will think that what’s going with Emme is what’s going on with the writer’s life and it’s not. She’s a story. They’ve run into problems with that from time to time.

Rebecca – She was criticized 2 years ago about a photo that showed sort of ‘much cleavage’ according to some people. But people said “why did you remove that photo? It’s YOUR site!”.

Her husband is super supportive.

Rebecca does not respond/send an army of Twitter followers. Not making a big deal of trolls (behind the scenes it really does affect personally).

When you have your own space, you monitor your online presence, etc. You don’t feed the negative side. You don’t feel the trolls. Erica mentioned that on Facebook you find it very difficult to interact. Facebook is good in that they can block people, etc.

There’s a lot of things that you can control on Facebook. They’re busy people but they are good at that.