Doing my Facebook homework

I really am. I’m doing a course right now on Social Tech & Communication and the chosen topic is the ubiquitous Facebook.

Now that I’m researching it a little more though I’ve come to some surprising findings – mostly on privacy and perhaps just a reflection of my own online behaviour.

From the days when my dad first told me about the net and to “never put your first and last name” online for fear of identity theft, I now (look above) have my own website with my name, a Facebook account, LinkedIn, Xing, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, (okay okay.. I don’t use all of these), but I’m not one to shy away from using my full name or talking about myself online. I have a blog – enough said.

I just spent 30min showing one of my Finnish friends how to use Facebook though and was almost surprised at how nervous she was at putting all this information on the web. When I think about it though, I was the same way two years ago. I saw an American in France playing with his MySpace account and was absolutely dumbfounded that people were putting so much info about themselves and even their babies online… totally new concept for me in 2005.

One of the topics we’re analysing right now is how Facebook is changing social behaviour.

Think about it:

• “Wall to Wall” – how many of you have been guilty ‘creeping’ on friends’ full conversations?
• Do you know your Privacy details? – have you gone so far to double check what your profile looks like to people you don’t know?
• Do you care?

No doubt about it, our generation has become more open, expressive and voyeuristic.

But…do we know the consequences of our actions?

Taking a look at the Facebook Privacy Policy and what’s being said about it online shows some perturbing facts…

• Facebook Beacon – not new news here but lots of controversy (and here – just google it and you’ll find plenty!)
• What lawyers have said about the FB Policy (good and interesting read)
• Deleting an account ≠ “deactivating” (and it was only a few weeks ago that FB revamped their policy decided to change this policy so that you could more easily fully delete an account.

There are plenty of other concerns (although changes have happened recently) but the truth of the matter is, not everyone is paying attention to the privacy situation because granted, not everyone cares.

But should we? Is this going to kick us in the pants later on?

Not sure so perhaps I should be a bit more careful, but in the meantime, but I’m still very gung ho about the good ol’ social network and I’ll keep on adding new friends:)

It’s now holidays here and I don’t have to go back to school until next Thursday, so…

Hyvää pääsiäistä! (Happy Easter)