Tweet tweet….

Twitter has been on the ‘to do’ list for a long time, yet it has only been very recently that i have noticed those clipped chirpy sounds echoing around me with every piece of media i am exposed to.  Not only on the internet, but on the television, in newspapers, and word around town too.  I have come to the conclusion that Twitter has captured the ability to keep a running commentary on life.

A societal club i am involved in had its Annual General Meeting last night, to which i begrudgingly attended with the assumption that it would be a tedious task of listening and voting on motions i didn’t understand.  The first hour and a half was panning out according to my supposition, and was making me sleepy as the darkening hour of 10pm loomed, until my friend next to me enlightened me to simulcast live feed.

A facebook feed of over 600 comments pertaining to the motions being simultaneously put forward by members of the committee.  Not only did it lighten the onerous task of listening to  number crunching accounts, data sheets and strength and weakness reflections, it also put the confusing clauses of 13.4.1A and 2.3.6C into plain english for me.  A whole heap of people were able to translate the cumbersome sentence structures for the feed followers which helped to understand the reasoning behind each motion and set of data which otherwise seemed quite foreign.

While this feed was not a twitter supported use of media, what started out as a tagging of 6 people to the status ‘AGM!!!!!’  on facebook, turned out to be followed and commented on by over 10 different users.  If this is not a positive use of Web 2.0’s dynamic facilitation then i may just have to abstain from commenting.

Privacy or Pry-vacy?

privacy |ˈprīvəsē| noun

the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people

the state of being free from public attention

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/privacy

According to the dictionary, it seems that like Web 2.0 has changed the meaning of ‘interactivity’, Web 2.0 and Social Networking Sites (SNS) have changed the nature of ‘privacy’.  Once treated as a very selective process of eliminating unwanted intervention by acquaintances or friends, privacy has now become a means of filtering and differentiating the totally unknown from the mere ‘friends of friends’ or briefly introduced from some place on some day at some unspecified time in one’s current memory.  The issue is not necessarily one of privacy once your SNS is up and running, but more about selectivity before anyone is admitted to observe your virtual facebook life.

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/images/facebook-cartoon.jpg

So i beg the question; Is it a question of privacy to keep those who are not our friends out, or a question of being less ‘add-happy’ and limiting the pry-ability of those able to access our personal information?

 

Every time you permit the use of a quiz or game application using your profile, you are condoning the use of your information by the application creator.  Without being aware of it, we are ‘routinely giving up data as we interact with networked media’ (Gane & Beer 2008 100).  These are the privacy issues we need to be considering.  So not only is it the ‘add happy’ nature of facebook hat we have to be aware of, but also our ‘allow happy’ attitude to facebook interaction.

The definition at the top of the page states that privacy is ‘being free from public attention’.  While this may be true of our personal facebook pages and the decisions made about who can view them, however this does not include the viral marketing and advertising in the page margin.  For this matter of privacy, perhaps a better term is security.  ‘Privacy is a right and security is a means to ensure that right’ (Rosenberg).  Social Networking Sites obtain uploaded information from enabled sources and applications and retain recently searched topics to aid in advertising with the knowledge of apparent  interests.  This personalised marketing scheme can be both beneficial, if you are interested in suggested sites and recommended products, but also seen as a breach of personal information knowledge.

Mark Zuckerberg talks of a ‘master control’ to manage content and limit viewing.  Surely there should be an easy way to do the same thing to control privacy and security for all our Internet use.  Just as facebook has devised this easy method of selective viewing that overrides all application viewing platforms, so too should other SNSs and advertising and marketing related websites.  Security on Internet sites outside of facebook should be made easily available, and widely known in order to avoid leaks of private information to unwanted third parties.  As Zuckerberg says ‘more control leads to more comfort which leads to more sharing’.

If users can control; to whom their information is being passed on to, the amount being divulged and for what purposes, then users are more likely to reciprocate.  Making better and safer privacy choices will lead to more comprehensive security, and consequently a more willing consumer/user will deliver more accurate advice to facilitate conclusive market segmenting and advertising.