Mixing fun and serious in business

A couple of weeks ago I had a message from somebody (not a business contact) commenting on the style of threads on Ecademy, the social business networking site. As you will see, the person doesn't regard Ecademy as a place where serious business is done or discussed, nor indeed where serious business people hang out.

"Now the threads at Ecademy have so many batty cartoons and loud-font signatures (and let's add the Skype icons along with the Twitter icons which trail the colored membership stars, etc.) and the average Ecademy thread looks like a MySpace page where twelve-year-old are attaching cool avatars or catchy quotes by Cicero or by Robbie Williams as they complain, using frowny faced icons, that their parents don't understand them."

I can see the point that this person is making, but on the other hand a lot of serious new businesses (e.g. Google) use whacky graphics and fun stuff. I know that that Smugmug, a 10-year-old photo sharing site that's been self-funded and profitable all along, does some pretty whacky stuff back at base.

I've no doubt that there are plenty of buttoned-down businesses people who would fire everybody on Ecademy in a heart-beat for not being serious. There are some very hard-nosed, glum people around. A very senior contact of mine recently told me about attending a board meeting of his company in the USA where the CEO was ranting about health care and commies.

However, I think that there are plenty of successful young companies proving that it's perfectly possible and even desirable to be effective in business while keeping a light touch and a sense of play.