Narrowing Your Social Networking
Today's column may get me in hot water with my colleagues: Social-networking sites have been a huge help to reporters looking for sources, so advice on keeping your info private from strangers isn't doing my coworkers any favors. (Read after the jump for an anecdote about how we conduct this kind of research.)
But your exposure to random strangers is something that have to consider as we all herd onto sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn--and especially the first in that list, as it can work well for both personal and business networking. You're increasingly likely to find that people want to be your friend, but it's not personal.
Today's column grew out of a conversation I had years ago with a friend who then worked at CommunityConnect.com, the New York operator of a variety of online social hubs. We were talking about Microsoft's efforts to get everybody to adopt its Passport identity-management system (this ambitious project that now sees almost no use outside of Microsoft's Windows Live sites). Arul's theory was that nobody actually wanted a single online persona, even if that meant they could stop memorizing separate user names and passwords; people preferred to keep multiple identities--one for work, one for home, one for family and still others for particular interests and hobbies.
That conversation popped back in my head after reading Sam Diaz's Post I.T. note of the other week, which made me realize I was facing this exact problem at sites like Facebook. Deciding whether to befriend people who weren't quite pals, but who were still worth knowing, was like deciding who to share my home e-mail address with, but with more involved consequences.
Then I started exploring Facebook's privacy settings--yup, like most people I hadn't tinkered with the defaults. I quickly discovered that while they offered most of the flexibility I sought, there were so many of them that the site might only be replacing a privacy problem with a usability problem.
The answer isn't to drop social-networking sites altogether. Although it's easy to parody them--"if you didn't waste so much time on the Web, you wouldn't need a Web site that connected you with your friends!"--they serve a real purpose. They're tremendously useful for finding people you've lost touch with and, in particular, for letting friends know what you've been up to once you've found them. But these sites have to make it easier for you to manage different levels of relationship.
Otherwise, all these sites will wind up like MySpace. Not only is this site laughably ugly--seriously, can't somebody at least fix the random capitalization in "You Must Be Logged-In to do That!"--but its inflexible approach to privacy makes it a spam magnet. The minimal profile I set up there last year for a story has drawn a steady stream of bogus friend requests from the likes of "Misty," "Lily" and "Tara," all of whom just want me to check out the nekkid pictures they've allegedly stashed at another site. Suuuure.
Where do you do your social networking online, and how do you manage this issue? What would you like to see your preferred network(s) do to help you out with it?
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The news-research department here did a presentation last month about how to find people on sites like MySpace and Facebook. The researcher explained how to craft a Web search to find somebody's profile even if it wasn't under a full name, then showed the Google query she used to locate the MySpace profile of a high schooler who had gone missing recently--something like "rachel sixteen years old wheaton high school myspace.com." I'm just guessing here, but I might have a hard time explaining that kind of search to my wife were she to find it on the computer at home.
By Rob Pegoraro |
July 19, 2007; 10:01 AM ET
| Category:
The Web
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Posted by: Gee | July 19, 2007 10:43 AM
I don't understand why anyone over 25 would want one of these. It seems like a time sink to me and I have enough of those already.
Posted by: slar | July 19, 2007 11:22 AM
I do my online social networking at Hulver's, K5 (not so much since the Forces of Light lost the Great Troll Wars a few years ago), /., and various blogs that allow commenting.
Interestingly enough, googling for my real name turns up nothing. Googling for "wiredog" turns up an ex-marine, an ISP in RoVa, and me. Lots of me.
Posted by: wiredog | July 19, 2007 1:01 PM
I tend to use the same name on most sites - MySpace, LiveJournal, Flickr, my blog, other people's blog comments, various online discussion forums. I guess I have a varying "persona" depending on where I'm logged in, but hey, I also act and talk differently at the corner pub than I do at a job-related seminar, or at dinner with my parents. The people that scare me are the ones that meticulously craft a persona to appear as somebody they are not.
I agree that MySpace is unbelievably clueless in the areas of user-interface design and privacy (to name just two; it's like a textbook example of how to do everything wrong and still somehow succeed). As Gee mentioned, however, it is a good place for me to connect to various musicians as a fan.
Posted by: LM | July 20, 2007 10:11 AM
Super color scheme, I like it! Good job. Go on. 570751557
Posted by: myspace | July 20, 2007 4:44 PM
I've been using Facebook for a few months without a lot of problems. Generally, if I get a friend request from someone I don't know, I either send a message asking where I know them from, or I just reject it. (Of the 4 "where do I know you from" messages I've sent, all replied that the friend request must have been a mistake.)
And if it's someone I know but don't really want as a friend, I accept their request and then take them off my friends list a few days later. It's usually someone I know from, say, grade 2, and I figure they'll take a look around my profile once, then probably never again, so they likely won't notice that I'm not on their "friends" list. If it comes up, I can just use the "sorry, I guess my account got screwed up" excuse.
I'm a lot more comfortable on Facebook with my privacy settings cranked up. I much prefer to keep most people from seeing my profile until I know that they're there.
Posted by: jp | July 20, 2007 9:55 PM
The noise and actions that lead to convergence is heating up fast. Just consider the last thirty days of announcements: Google, Facebook, Linkedin, MSN, IBM and others ( I can hardly keep up anymore). Soon it won't matter which existing network "you" think is better rather value will be created by how you manage "your network". As more and more closed systems open, it begins to interact more directly with other existing systems, and therefore acquires all the value of those systems.
Soon we will all be overwhelmed with an abundance of value proposition in which you'll need to decide how and what to use in "your" network to meet your personal and professional aims. You will soon become your own aggregator of networks, of relationships, of information, of knowledge and last but not least...of VALUE.
Technology provides the means, relationships provide the value.
The Relationship Economy is now, not when, being built by individuals who learn how to maximize the value of relationships by optimizing technology. We'll need to forget what we've been using and think "how" to adapt to the convergence of means which enables us to maximize value. We need to ReThink our methods and ReShape the means so we can individually and collectively capture the most value.
There are seven things to consider and help you start thinking and planning for "your" network:. I write about them on my blog at The Relationship Economy: http://jayderagon.com/blog/
Posted by: Jay Deragon | July 21, 2007 7:32 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
1. First of all, I find it funny that tech journalists and pundits are always trashing myspace. Its hideousness aside, myspace is excellent at networking musicians and artists. Lots of people use it and love it because it makes it easy to connect bands to bands, and fans to bands, and all permutations of that sort.
I'll admit that visually it's a turn-off, but the high quality of its content is amazing.
2. I've been using facebook for a few days, and like someone was quoted as saying - it's excellent for connecting people who already know each other. Getting that initial connection is hard, i.e., hooking up with old friends and classmates. But many of the internet elite maintain a blog or even complete-personal-website for broadcasting their lives. But facebook's value is the traction it has. My 2 sisters in law are facebook addicts, but they are younger (college age), and not especially tech savvy.
3. I always use a pseudonym for just about everything non-career oriented. It sucks because I'd love to post and discuss family oriented topics online with a real name, but I'm a bit too cautious for that. I'd like to think that nothing i'm involved in deserves that much scrutiny that something in one realm of my life would affect another realm.
You should find the paper out there on "red coat / black coat" notions of online identities and privacy.