Jed Petralia
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Have you typed your name in google recently?
When I typed my name into Google 9 out of the first 10 responses related to me, the other was a blogger from Texas who shops at Walmart every Sunday, he’s 75.
Yes, anyone who wanted to know who I was and where I lived would find out instantly that I’m 19, I live with my parents in Toowong, I listen to music, go to festivals and regularly update my facebook and twitter accounts.
But is this all that worrying to me? You will find the answer to this soon.
The aim of this blog is to reflect my experiences in using these social and mobile computing applications and how I feel about my digital footprint being broadcasted everywhere and to anyone online.
All in all I feel that all social and mobile computing applications are either very similar or the same. Your facebook profile is not much different to your Myspace profile; your twitter account and your Flickr profile is virtually identical to the photo album application you use on Facebook. Even Delicious is bordering on this idea with providing a site that houses all these sites on the same page. Last.fm tells a person on the other side of the world that your currently blaring Radiohead from your speakers at your home.
What users don’t understand, and this is where I want to emphasise my point, is that the entire social networking body is just one big blog of personal information about yourself that anyone can read. Often people ask what happens to all that information once your comment disappears or after you delete your account, it remains in the hands of the application providers, just read the terms and conditions. This was posted online by NowPublic Media on February 16th 2009: “Facebook has quietly altered its Terms of Service (or Terms of Use) such that they now maintain rights to any and all original content uploaded by you, forever.” Unfortunately for us the application providers are not making us read the terms and conditions of use after every single ‘submit’ we click. I challenge the bloggers of comp3505 to read the terms and conditions for yourselves.
Just like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter took the world-wide-web by storm, by providing an engine that allows you to post what you’re doing 24 hours a day. Who would’ve thought that such a simple idea would attract thousands upon thousands of hits, or are they tweets? A second.
From my excessive use of twitter over the past few weeks for comp3505 I think they are actually heading in the right direction. People are tweeting to each other online knowing full well that there tweets are going to be read by people from the other side of the world. Alas, some of users want to be heard from the other side of world. Facebook and myspace are the complete opposite. Users are “saving” personal information about themselves online by commenting to friends, by posting up blogs, by uploading images and not even realising that all this information is owned by the application providers.
Please keep in mind that I’m not trying to persuade you to delete one account and start up another because it’s a better service. If you don’t want people reading what you writing about, or if you don’t want your boss to see your drunken profile pictures from the night before then common sense tells you do not put it up.
This poses the question whether it’s necessary for these online profiles to even exist?
I think it is. In a day and age where everyone is becoming computer literate people want an easy way to talk peer-to-peer online. It’s by far the easiest, quickest and low cost way to talk to your friends, apart from seeing them in person.
What are the facts?
1. 41 percent of all Australian internet users have at least one social and networking profile.
2. 70 percent of them have more than one profile
3. 3 quarters claim they are posting pictures, half are doing emails and talking peer to peer online
People are engaging in this to a pretty huge extent! [Tony Marlow: Online Research Expert]
I was re-watching Triple J’s Hack program “MYFACE” online the other day and a girl explained that she loves her myspace profile because she “comes across more confident online, as opposed to real life”. She is sixteen year old called Sophie and has currently over 200,000 myspace friends and has created a virtual reality of herself online and is living inside it - Just like I am. The fact that everyone can read my profile and see what parties I attended to in the last week doesn’t worry me. But if I thought that it might decrease the chances of me getting my next job, then I would definitely think twice about what I put up online.
It has come to my attention that small companies and business owners are doing an online check up about the person prior to the interview. Gaynor Lowndes a recruitment manager based in Sydney stresses this even more on Triple J’s hack program, “Recruiters absolutely use your networking site to make judgements about you, so do potential employers. Offers of employment have been retracted. People are putting stuff up there that potential employers shouldn’t be reading. If you want to keep it private keep it of the web.” (2) Employers are even going as far as firing there employees due to facebook statuses. Kimberly Swann said she was bored at work and got fired because of it. http://criticisethat.blogspot.com/2009/03/teen-fired-for-saying-she-was-bored-on.html.
Solutions:
Facebook and Myspace alike should remind users that what’s being posted online will stay online, because they own it. Twitter users, should keep on twittering. This application has people purposefully going online knowing that there stuff is going to be read by heaps of users. But please don’t forget the major point here, don’t put anything online that you don’t want everyone else to know. Most networking site still have some or most of your information even after you delete it. Facebook will happily restore your account even though you deleted it almost 4 months ago.
Conclusion:
I will continue to use facebook, twitter, delicious and last.fm because it’s apart of my young and vibrant social life. Plus it’s required for comp3505! I have created myself a virtual online reality and I’m currently living in it and its not about to change. These applications are simple and easy to set up. There’s countless documentation online about how to upload content, what applications are possible with each account and what can you do where. Go read them if your having trouble.
What I’m aware about is the privacy issues that are involved with signing up to these sites. These sites are a thing of the future, hopefully when I google my name in a few months time only 5 out of the first 10 responses will be about me.
References
(1) http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/triplej/tv/hackhh_ep1_myface.mp4
Friday, April 3, 2009
Have you typed your name in google recently?
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7 comments:
yes, most of your points are pretty vaild... i agree with beware of what you post... and it's true, we're all young, and it's apart of our generation to uses these softwares, if we choose not to use it, we won't be able to follow other in this society
Yep, eventually everyone growing up in this age will join some sort social website. Plus, there also all those spammers that pretend to be people who know you and send invitations to join their site, younger kids wont know so they'll just join them. It gets me paranoid.. O_O
I definitely agree with your point of 'if you don't want people reading it, don't post it'. What kind of shocked me about your article was the fact the potential employers are using online searches to suss out potential employees. I personally don't see the point in that since social sites are meant to be part of someone personal life and not their professional one. After finishing your article it honestly made me consider removing all my photos from Facebook hahaha. It's a bit of a worry that they get to keep all your information...forever
An extreme;y scary thought.
The fact that potential employers are trawling our myspace and facebook pages tells me that we say more about ourselves to our online contacts than what we would say or act in a face to face job interview.
I agree, if you don't want people to know about it, don't post it.
Actually Facebook doesn't own the content you post, you just grant them pervasive use rights (wording from Terms of Use- "Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content").
For the most part I agree with you, however there are privacy settings for Facebook which you can activate so only people you allow can view your profile in full. Not many 10 year olds will be able to figure this out for themselves, but you are right, if you don't want people to see it then you shouldn't be posting it, should you.
Privacy is certainly an issue I think about online. Having a unique surname makes me feel unsafe using my real name online. Anyone can google may name and suddenly know where i live and what my phone number is. This is especially worring considering the way in which various individuals and companies might use this information.
I too am shocked to find out that employers are firing people for posting certain photos. How a person acts in a specific situation is not a good generaliser of their personality. It makes you wonder where we should draw the line.
Jed I think you hit the nail on the head with your post. I feel that Twitter is heading in the right direction and users are going on there knowing beforehand that there comment is going to be read by others all around the world.
Twitter is better because you don't have to put that much of your personal information online. Unless Facebook where everyone can read everything.
Again, well done on your post!
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