the tindog coffeehouse

I wrote a post back in December about social networking sites like Facebook and the issue of personal privacy. At the time I wrote that I didn’t have an account on any of these sites and didn’t see the need to. That’s changed.

I recently signed up for both Facebook and LinkedIn. I had been considering LinkedIn for a few days as a way to put my resume out there and use it to possibly find a new job down the road. In other words, as a business networking tool. Meanwhile, my wife had signed up on Facebook while looking for some old friends of hers. As a result, I decided to also sign up for Facebook for personal use.

One of the main arguments for joining these sites is that they are very commonplace, particularly with teens and those in their 20s, and they will continue to be more so as time goes on. It’s just the evolution of technology.

It used to be that no one had email or Internet access in their homes. Then a few people got it and a few more and a few more until it became extremely common, and now it’s unusual to find someone that doesn’t have Internet access in their home or doesn’t have a personal email address. The same thing happened with cell phones and instant messaging and eventually with texting. Social networking is simply the next step in the evolutionary process. On a personal level, it’s an extension of email or instant messaging or texting. On a business level, it’s an extension of sites like Monster or CareerBuilder.

I still stand behind what I wrote previously concerning privacy, though. I’m very reluctant to put anything on either Facebook or LinkedIn that I’m not 100% comfortable sharing with others. I haven’t finished setting up my LinkedIn profile, but I’ve been tweaking my Facebook profile and settings for a couple of days, and I can easily see where people get into trouble.

There is a certain tendency to put a lot of information out there; after all, wouldn’t you want to share your photos and other information with your friends? Certainly there’s nothing wrong with that, right? Except that over time people who may not be your real-life friends may see that information, and it may not be information you would want them to see. Fortunately, Facebook lets you tweak many of these privacy settings. Unfortunately, I don’t think the settings are fine-tuned as much as they should be, and the default settings are too lax. The settings could also be a lot more user-friendly. Regardless of your privacy settings, the same rule still applies: if you don’t want that information to be seen, don’t put it out there to begin with.

Maybe I’m a more private person than most Facebook users. Maybe I’m too paranoid. I don’t know. But I do agree that these sites can be a valuable tool personally and professionally if used with a decent amount of common sense.