The Cricket and the Tiger

First, some observations about Linked-in.  Linked-in is the clear leader in professional social networking.  It has established credibility as a networking tool, and has evolved a set of understood use rules that deter unwanted contact/marketing attempts.

It is also becoming a serious threat to online professional recruiting sites.  Targeting is much easier, and in many cases you can identify and reach out to prospective candidates without relying on ads/recruiters.  There are blogs on Linked-in etiquette, even books about how to use Linked-in.  But it seems to me that it is remarkably easy to understand how to use it and how to abuse it.

One odd thing I’ve noticed recently is the presence of the dead.  I know of two people on Linked-in who are deceased.  The system has been around long enough now to actually include a fair number of people who are deceased.  I can imagine a day when we could all track our advancing age and mortality simply by keeping track of how many members of our network have passed away.   I don’t know that action is required today, but at some point we will need a way to start tagging the dead in social networks, tastefully and with some process.  Perhaps we all need an online next-of-kin, who can be relied on to eliminate or memorialize our online presence when we pass.

I’ve also noticed that some of the most successful people I know in the industry have a profile but only a connection or two.  The power nodes in network really don’t need the notoriety.  In fact, notoriety in a world of obsessive network builders and hangers-on couldn’t be more frightening to those who are centers of influence.

Which leads me to some technical thoughts on Tiger.  I think we can all agree that there was something burning in him besides a competitive drive.  That he chose to live that out the way he did is a source of media fascination.  But as a former intelligence analyst, I am amazed at his naiveté about technology.  A smart phone is a gold mine for someone seeking personal information, as is a Linked-in profile.  Any aggregation of personal information and connections can be mined and exploited by others.  Tiger’s stumbling admission that his wife had “gone through” his phone was telling.

From his phone his wife had access to his call log, email, numbers dialed, etc.  It is hard to imagine someone with such a persona/behavior mismatch not realizing that his phone was his Achilles heal.  You can imagine the chain of events.  His wife hears of the National Enquirer story from a friend.  She waits until his phone is unattended and starts writing down numbers, reading emails and text messages.  She confronts him about the story and threatens to call all the numbers in his phone.  At some point during the ensuing arguments he secrets himself somewhere (bathroom maybe) and calls the girl he is most worried about, leaving the message that guarantees her a big tabloid payday.

Tiger is a bad husband, no doubt.  He also is remarkably wreckless in his personal life.  But all of us probably have things – proprietary or personal – on our personal devices that we don’t think to protect as well as we should.  The implications for the famous, for the young and vulnerable, are obvious.  There are technologies to manage this problem, but they are usually focused on corporate buyers.  Look for those technologies to recieve more consumer attention going forward.

Of course, Tiger might have saved himself some trouble by using a pre-paid phone purchased by a friend at a Cricket store.

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