Good post and comments by Tara Hunt on sharing personal experience in public via net.

People are sharing more publicly. There IS a vanishing line. And, like Jeff, I think it is a generally good and generous thing. I just take one look at the humanity in something like http://www.wefeelfine.org and realize that it may be the first step to recognizing that the personal hasn’t been taken care of and that people feel abandoned. Somehow professional belongs in public and personal belongs in private, but not everyone has the sanctum of a safe, accepting, helpful surrounding to feel better. That’s what I deal with and I have 30,000+ friends to call on anytime! Would I tweet less about private matters if I had a great partner and a family who understood me really well? Absolutely. But knowing what I know now about what I tweet/FB/blog and how people respond, I would still share as much as I could to help others.

I often get scolded about this,  but nearly all of those who scold are among those who don’t themselves stay in touch with me enough to have the right to tell me what I should and should not share in public. If they’re not going to be available as an outlet for me,  I’m damn well going to find an outlet.  And if what I share in that “public outlet” is not evidence enough that I sense a deep need for connectedness where there has been isolation,  and all these “friends” in social media spaces are too busy hawking their own spaces to listen,  then that right there, ladies and gentlemen,  is the problem with social media in 99% of the population. 

That’s why I follow people like Jeff Jarvis and Tara Hunt,  and “The Cluetrain guys”.  They have a much better sense of the need for the personal,  and the value of it as an encouragement for others to not stay isolated and reach out.  I am so SICK of church agencies using this “social media”  as “marketing speak” channels,  and not listening at all.  Its almost blasphemous in the truest sense of the word:  it fouls the reputation of the church as a place to “be” and to “become” and to participate in community.

Mystery and the Modern Woman- comments

Yeah,  it’s “marketing speak” channel and not “social” media at all when 99% of the tweets are links to one’s own articles or events.  This is evidence of the LACK of  listening.  Chris Brogan reminds us time and time again that no one wants to listen to people who constantly talk about their own accomplishments,  and yet we still think its OK to fill our “social media” output with news about ourselves and what we’re doing.  Somewhere along the line in “social” life,  we need to talk to others about what interests THEM.  That might just make them a little more  open to the idea that we might ,  just might,  have some clue about what might help THEM. 

A while back I tweeted an outburst related to this.  It’s been a while,  so I’ll repeat it here.  “Saying you’re ‘doing social media’ because you use the tools’ is like saying my pet bird reads because he craps on newspaper in the bottom of the cage”

People are interested in the sound of the human voice;  not getting promotions hurled at them.  People can recognize “marketing speak”,  and this is true in church circles as well.  They can sense “denomination speak”.  Church leaders minister best by relating their own stories to THE story.  Our stories are valuable resource,  potentially joining us to others.  I don’t think we should be trying to “entice” people to come to us so we can share ourselves with them;  we need to have a “push” effort;   give them something human  from ourselves to show that we are a community.

(here is the comment by Jeff Jarvis referenced by Tara , which starts out reply to another commenter)

@Kathy, I don’t think that — your terms — knowledge sharing and personal sharing are always or should always be separate. I shared my experience with prostate cancer. That couldn’t be more personal. But it also brought others to share their knowledge and experience. And in this, I learned about not just the disease and treatment but about our social relations.

I think Tara is grappling with something much bigger here (something I’m grappling with myself as I write a book about publicness): the shifting line between private and public and why it is where it is. We hear much talk today about privacy and yet we see people sharing more publicly (which I will argue is a generaly good and generous thing).