Having dipped a toe into social media, I’m finding it’s a whirlpool sucking me in.

I’m a techie and I’m also pro-privacy. So while I’m hooked by the technology, I worry about where all this is leading. Is social media immunising us against privacy concerns? Perhaps even numbing our resistance to increasing levels of government paranoia-mongering?

Staying aware

The Big Brother connotations have been around for a while now. They were there in the early days, circa 1995, when online interactivity consisted mainly of independent silos – Usenet, forums and Inter-Relay Chat (IRC) applications.

Now, the silos are broken down and you can Stumble a bookmark to your Twitpic photo which then gets fed to Twitter which then sends it on to Friendfeed which sends it to your Blog which displays it on Facebook…

Also, as people tend to use their real names, employers, disgruntled ex-partners and the police can easily track what you’re up to.  Then there’s dodgy activities from third party applications sneaking in to steal your data. Not to forget the Internet Archive that stores everything for posterity.

Internet best practices add a layer of cushioning. Hide your date of birth & email address, make liberal use of privacy options and choose an obscure email password reminder question – not your maiden name etc. And obviously, if you hate your job, don’t twitter about it!

Today’s social media carries a seductive illusion of control – sometimes I think it must really be 30% proof because some of the stuff on twitter surely can’t have been posted while the sender was sober.

Despite knowing this (and probably being guilty myself of one or two “what-was-i-thinking” posts), I’m happily going for a swim in this whirlpool…

Knowing what you want

Social media is a real time-sink so knowing what you want from it becomes a way of helping keep you on the straight and narrow.

Some people want to simply keep in touch with friends and family, to post photos and exchange some easy conversation. Others want to expand the reach of their business network.

My goals are:

1. Keep in touch with friends and family
2. Keep abreast of changing technology – I’m an ex-techie now working alone in a non-techie field so linking up with techies online helps me out a lot
3. Learn from people – get information, hints and tips on subjects I care about
4. Get the word out when I post a new blog

Knowing what my goals are helps me to identify the most appropriate social networks for my needs. Bungling up is all part of the game as I found out when I posted information about depression to my personal facebook page, leaving my friends and family wondering what I was on…

Linking up the Network

Up until a few days ago, my social media activities were more or less independent of each other and I was only active on a couple. I’m still only active on a couple but I’ve connected them up to make things a bit more streamlined. I’m already getting messages on one network initiated by something I posted on another.

Here is what my social media network looks like now – you’re welcome to click through & connect…

• Twitter – This is my current favourite. My tweets feed through to ecademy and friendfeed.
• *Facebook personal page – My links and notes feed through to friendfeed. It imports from *NetworkedBlogs.
• *Facebook fanpage – This feeds through to my Facebook personal page and facebook newsfeeds of those who are subscribed. It also imports from NetworkedBlogs.
• *Facebook group – I’ve kept this standalone for two reasons: 1) It’s had no activity for ages and 2) facebook doesn’t let groups connect to anywhere else!
• Friendfeed – This is my newest network. It feeds through to Twitter, the Paradox of Reality website and ecademy.  It imports from NetworkedBlogs, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook personal page, LinkedIn and the Paradox of Reality Blog.
• Ecademy- This imports from friendfeed, Twitter and the Paradox of Reality Blog.
• LinkedIn – This feeds through to friendfeed and imports from the Paradox of Reality Blog
• Paradox of Reality Blog – Although a blog is not a true network, it still falls under the social media banner. This feeds through to NetworkedBlogs, friendfeed, ecademy and LinkedIn.

Linking the networks together means that my goals become easier to manage. Friendfeed especially is a nice hub allowing people to take advantage of features from various sites in one place. I’m deliberately not feeding twitter to facebook because I haven’t found a way to feed it to just my facebook “fanpage”. It seems it has to go to the personal page too which is something that is not suitable for me – friends & family wouldn’t want to hear my twitters.

Each social network has a different flavour that impacts how you interact on it.  Twitter is a constant stream of real-time information from people you’ve actively added in order to read what they have to say. I get a lot of useful information from there. LinkedIn is a lot more formal.

Linking networks makes online social activity easier and efficient for those who are using it to exchange ideas with new people. But if you’re also using social media for personal socialising and are thinking of linking networks, it’s worth double-checking your privacy controls and setting your own rules on what is visible to people you’ve just met.

*Update December 2009 – I deleted my facebook account because it was no longer helping me with my goals.

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Photo Credit: SpoonGraphics
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