Foul Friendster: Fires Employee For Blogging
Last night, Judith Meskill tossed me an IM about a post she made. Her most recent post outlined the rather messy plight of trouthgirl, a once Friendster employee, that was fired for her blogging.
Joyce Park, Troutgirl, is a published PHP developer and played a critical role in the re-launch of Friendster on the PHP platform. She had mentioned previously on her blog that the site migration was completed and the post received quite a bit of commentary. Mind you, this was public information by all accounts.
Yesterday, she posted her entry "Shitcanned" where she made it clear that she was released because of her blogging. Specifically, there were two entries mentioned, including the one above:
The levels of irony on this are pretty deep. For one thing, I wrote a fairly well-known paper last year about the need for semi-permeable blogging. For another thing, by all accounts the particular posts that led to my termination were this one and this one (although feel free to check my archives for any other incriminating information). I try really hard not to blog about anything that is not a matter of public record... but I guess that's not protection any more. You get Slashdotted, make Udell's column, lose your job. And finally, it's especially ironic because Friendster, of course, is a company that is all about getting people to reveal information about themselves...
It's hard to put into words how incredibly asinine this situation is. A social networking company that persecutes its employees for engaging in social media. It's almost to hold her responsible if someone found her on Friendster, congratulated her on her PHP work, and she accepted that testimonial for display.
For some time I've noted that Friendster was plagued with issues as it still fails to provide a context for which I can apply the network to anything but the relatively trivial or low-use "lost friend" search. This only leaves a worst taste in my mouth now and definitely mars the image of the company as a whole for me.
I'm definitely not alone in this. Jeremy Zawodny’s Fired for Blogging shows just how frustrated some people are -- he's quit Friendster now (photo available), leaving the apt reason "firing employees for blogging".
