There is no privacy on Facebook

Just a couple of days ago I was having a rather interesting conversation with someone who posted some really rude and lewd comments (with no malicious intent, and indeed this person had meant it as a joke) on my Facebook wall. Instead of letting it sit there, I had deleted the comment and told him that I have colleagues, business contacts, and bosses, among my Facebook contacts, and that I’d like to have my profile remain as professional as possible, while trying not to compromise on my own personality in the process.

We then moved on to discussing his profile, which he insists is “private” and “locked”, and bosses and people outside his immediate social network (people he had granted access to, he said) would not have access to anything he has written on his own Facebook Wall, or on his photos, etc.

I’ve had several of these conversations with several people in the last few weeks, all of whom had insisted that Facebook, when locked, is completely private, and that is why they do not add colleagues, bosses, acquaintances, business contacts, etc., as they would like to maintain some semblance of privacy.

Now, that is extremely interesting, because yesterday, on Read Write Web, I saw the following article:

What Facebook Knows About You

The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put together a campaign to raise awareness of privacy issues surrounding Facebook applications, in particular quizzes. According to this group, the millions of Facebook users taking quizzes are revealing far more personal information to application developers than they are aware of. This is mostly due to the fact that Facebook’s default privacy settings allow access to all your profile information whether or not your profile is set to “private.” Even worse, the ACLU reports that even if you shun quizzes yourself, your profile info is revealed when one of your friends takes a quiz.

(Read the rest of the article)

I was curious, so I took ACLU’s quiz and yes, I risked all of your personal information (all 1,127 of you) to bring you this blog entry.

Here’s what the quiz showed me:

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Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off

How many times have you written LOL, LMAO, ROFL, Haha, WOW!, or even Awwww in the last 24 hours?

How many times have you meant exactly what you’d written?

How many times have you really rolled on the floor while laughing when you said ‘ROFL’? Did you really laugh out loud when the word ‘LOL’ slipped out on your keyboard?

Probably ZERO to all the above questions.

This is the face of the serial internet surfer or the Social Media Addict.

And these are the faces corresponding to the various expressions we use frequently on the internet:

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Social Media Addicts’ Association

What better way to make fun of Social Media than to use Social Media itself?

(via @iammyy)

Stop Writing on My Wall. Brilliant ad campaign by Sony Vaio. If it didn’t get your attention, you’re probably not sufficiently addicted to Social Media.

So, are you a Social Media addict? I know I am! But as they say, the first step to recovery is to admit it!

Managing your Facebook friends (and your image)

Here’s a pretty good article (actually it’s a Wiki, contributed by several authors) about how you can manage your Facebook profile and friends.

Read this article if:

1. You (you dinosaur, you) are still contemplating whether or not to join Facebook because you’re worried about ‘privacy issues’,
2. You feel that Facebook is “too personal” to link up with colleagues or business partners,
3. You’ve wondered whether or not to “friend” your ex,
4. You’ve had friends who post stories about sexual escapades, drunken moments, and racist comments on your wall,
5. You’re trying to decide if you should “friend” your boss or your boss’ boss

Don’t worry too much about how people judge you from that photo of your college party days back in 1997 or 2002 that recently found it’s way to Facebook through a friend who’s been scanning copies of his/her photo printouts. It shows you’re fun and hey, everyone’s had embarrassing moments.

If you really hate that photo, just un-tag it. Don’t get your panties into a knot just because someone’s posted a picture of you during your younger, wilder days.

Despite what some people think of Facebook (lack of privacy, so very unmanageable, I don’t need the whole world to know about me), and what some companies think of Facebook (for people who have nothing else better to do than post photos and check out other people’s profiles), Facebook is an important networking and marketing tool.

1. It creates a sometimes imagined facade the impression that you are approachable because people now know what books you like to read and what are your favorite shows on tv
2. It helps you keep in touch with old friends and acquaintances (and it never hurts to have an extended network that you can some day tap on)
3. It helps you maintain contact with new friends, customers and acquaintances
4. It gives people an avenue for getting updates about you (whether you’re an individual or a business)
5. It feeds not only your boredom but also your thirst for reading material - Facebook hosts an amazing amount of information that is actually useful at times, via your own friends who share links to articles, blogs, videos, websites, etc.

I can probably think of 100 reasons why you should be on Facebook, but if you have some reasons why you don’t think so, do share them! Or if you can think of other reasons why people should get on to Facebook, share them too!

Update 12 Aug 09, 15:14 hrs SGT: I got this from Zen on Plurk this morning:

I know I’ve said people should not be paranoid about adding their bosses on Facebook, but I guess people who have online verbal diarrhoea and don’t think about where they choose to take a dump should not add their bosses on Facebook.

Then again, they really shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near an internet connection.

Drawing a line between your individual personality and being an organization representative

Following up on the recent Tweet.sg case, where founder and owner of Tweet.sg SMS-Twitter service lashed out at users who commented on the lag time of Tweet.sg, Daryl Tay of Uniquefrequency.com shows a good example of a free service that doesn’t feel that its users owe them something, much less lash out at them.

In fact, the aforementioned service, gothere.sg, has had examplary open communication with its users via Twitter. People who have problems with the service or criticize it, receive responses inquiring about the status of the problems, so that there can be further investigations to improve the service.

Likewise, this morning I was pleasantly surprised to receive a comment on my blog, from the founder of Statuzer, a Twitter/SNS client, on the post I wrote last night, in which I did point out the shortcomings of their product. The comment surprised me because:

1. Statuzer responded so quickly - great media monitoring habits?
2. Statuzer’s founder humbly said that he’ll work on improvements, and invited me to contact him should I have any further feedback.

This wasn’t the first time that he’d taken the initiative to contact me - prior to this, he did contact me when I Tweeted that I was having problems with installation of Statuzer (eventually I realized it was AdobeAIR’s problem, and not the Statuzer client that was at fault).

Coming back to the problem at hand, Victor Tan of vic.sg wrote that Tweet.sg never did care about its reputation, as it had no intention of monetizing it. In fact, as Victor pointed out, Tweet.sg has been recommending other similar services to Tweet.sg users who were disatisfied with its service.

While I do agree that people have the option to leave a free service if they are unhappy with the admins, developers, or the service itself, and that not everyone is cut out to be customer-oriented or have a pleasant disposition, in the end the question is really about how successfully we can dissociate a PR disaster from the rest of our life.

As someone who has made errors prior in reputation management, I’d say that it’s completely impossible. Till this day, I still have people sending me hatemail about the Ping.sg saga of a year ago. While I decline to further comment on that issue, I do feel that I’ve learnt a lot in the year past. That ink stain will probably be a permanent mark on my life’s canvas, but a worse situation would be if one never learns.