Reflection by Sam Handyside 40277518

My reflection is concerned with the motivation behind joining and utilising social networking sites (SNS), as well as the risks and benefits of doing so. From my experience, I was reluctant to join sites such as MySpace or Facebook, believing that too much personal information would be revealed. I was less apprehensive about sites like Last.fm or Flickr as they require more specific information but, generally speaking, it is less sensitive and I can choose which content I supply. Not having had any experience with Twitter, I was not sure what to make of it at first. Based on personal experience and research into the area, I was able to better understand the attraction of SNS and the needs they fulfill. However, I was alarmed at a number of privacy and copyright issues involved, and these confirmed some of the dangers I suspected these sites harboured.

Background
The Web 2.0 revolution put the users at the forefront; sites were created around the idea of user-created content where people are encouraged to share their ideas and opinions, and their needs are what drive SNS's. The main sites I'll be referring to are Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm.

Facebook
I imagine the majority of people reading this blog know about Facebook. It is intended to facilitate socialisation and sharing of information, as well as providing third-party applications. These applications extend the functionality of Facebook, enabling people with similar interests to form groups or participate in various activities. Facebook was not required as part of Social & Mobile Computing this semester, but I already had an account and have had the most hands-on experience with this site. Having said that, I am not a heavy user of Facebook. I check two or three times a week, most weeks, but have been known to go over a month without checking it.

Twitter
Twitter I had only learned about at the start of this course, but in the intervening weeks it seems to have grown more and more ubiquitous. Being a microblogging service, with a limit of 140 characters per message, it requires very little time and effort to use, so the barrier to entry is remarkably low. It is further lowered by the openness of communication it offers; there are no set topics that must be addressed, and no strict norms nor procedures that must be followed (Bouman et al., 2008). My personal experience with Twitter is minimal but it has been a major focus of many studies, with some very interesting insights into the social nature of people and will be used to demonstrate an example of some of the dangers to privacy that online sharing can introduce. Ironically, the ease at which information can be gathered from Twitter means there is a wealth of real-world statistics to analyse.

Last.fm
Last.fm primarily allows users to upload their music playlists and then offer suggestions of other bands and songs they may enjoy. I personally liked this idea as I have started to grow tired of my own collection and wanted to explore other musical alternatives. While anonymity and confidentiality can not be assured by the site (http://www.last.fm/legal/terms), I felt safer using this site as I only needed to supply the kind of music I listen to, and it also led me to further research into the benefits of social networking.

“Who gives a tweet?”
The purpose of this reflection is to elaborate the attraction to SNS's and the implications they have on personal privacy. When I think of sites like MySpace and Facebook offering me a chance to share my life with the world, I would always ask myself “Why would anyone care?” Being rather reclusive in nature, I don't enjoy sharing many details about my life to someone unless I know them fairly well. How many of you know where I went to school, what my hobbies are, or when my birthday is? However, after some convincing, all this information is now on Facebook and can be looked at by anyone rather than being known only to those closest to me. Facebook, like Twitter, offers an opportunity to learn more about a person, albeit in an impersonal way. There is now less reliance on direct communication to find out what kind of music someone likes, or what someone did over the weekend. Through SNS's, I find that I know more about the activities of my friends (my actual friends, not the miscellany that occupies my 'friends list') without needing to engage them directly. I therefore appreciate the usefulness that these sites offer, but I personally feel that the benefit is limited to my circle of friends, and have little desire to see or be seen by people I don't know.

Who can see my information?
However, it concerns me that by offering personal information so freely it gives someone an opportunity to view this information and use it to cause me inconvenience or perhaps harm. You would think that that would mean I would thoroughly read the Terms of Use to know who had access to my personal information before agreeing to them. I, like many others, simply did not bother (Krishnamurthy & Wills, 2008). I instead naively trusted that Facebook would not allow my information to be viewed by anyone outside of my friends list: those I explicitly gave permission to. I also recently learned that all the content that I post is copyrighted by Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php), technically giving them the right to treat that content as theirs. This means they are essentially free to sell any information I give them, should they decide to do so, however that act would undermine the premise of Facebook, and I consider it unlikely given the response to the proposed change to their terms of service (http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5757485.ece). I remain particularly wary of third-party applications that, while seemingly harmless, require access to your full profile despite only needing a portion of the information (Krishnamurthy & Wills, 2008). As such, I tend to avoid much of the extra functionality that Facebook provides through fear of misuse of personal information.

What can they do with my information?
Another cause for concern is that it is possible to infer the identities and glean more information about users by cross-referencing various SNS's (Motahari et al., 2007, Narayanan & Shmatikov, 2009). To take our esteemed lecturer as an example, I used information from LinkedIn, Twitter, the UQ website and a few others to research his life. I was able to deduce the names of his brother, son and daughter, where she attends school and what grade she is in, where and which night his son has soccer training, his home phone number, his home address, as well as his educational and vocational experiences all in the space of a little under an hour. All this information is found in the public arena and I broke no laws, but I honestly felt as though I was intruding on his life and did not want to venture any further. I can only imagine what someone could find out if they had no such qualms, and what they then may do with that information.

Benefits of sharing
To be fair, there are benefits to sharing information online. By sharing when and where I went to school I was able to catch up with people I had not seen in years. This, for me, was the most useful aspect of Facebook. It was easy to add a few friends, and then see more friends that they had added to quickly find all the people you like. It also helps with organising social events and keeping in contact with friends who live interstate. It was not surprising to me to find that most social networking relationships are based on pre-existing relationships (Java et al., 2007). These are not always 'friendships' in the traditional sense; many followers in Twitter are fans of blogs, celebrities, as well as following online radio stations and news outlets (Krishnamurthy et al. 2008). This aspect of Twitter I find unappealing. Apart from the very few entertainers who I can respect, there are no celebrities whose thoughts I would ever want to hear. Interestingly, Twitter has expanded from its original design to incorporate more features as driven by its users (Java et al., 2007). Apart from the typical updates of what people are doing, it is also used to share links and spread news (Java et al., 2007). The response times for breaking news stories can be well ahead of the recognised news media (http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2008/05/06/breaking-news-twitter-style/). In this way, I believe it is possible to think of the posts as a current, constantly adapting Zeitgeist; at any given moment it is a snapshot of what people are doing and thinking across the globe, or at least North America (Krishnamurthy et al. 2008).

Honest representation
Up until this point I have been treating the idea of users' information as accurate and honest. Yet the relative obscurity offered online means you can present yourself as you want to be seen (Bouman et al., 2008). I know I chose to omit some of the more controversial musical selections from my Last.fm profile. My general username, too, was chosen not only because no-one else would think of it, but it also represents an aspect of my character I am willing to share. SNS's allows people to reveal only certain features about themselves and may fulfill some need to appear a certain way to others (Bouman et al., 2008). I understand why people do this, but I can't help but think it is counterproductive to the openness of the social networking ethos. However, in the real world people also present a certain social identity, and online networking is just an extension of that (Bouman et al., 2008).

So why do people use SNS's?
While I can't say for sure why other people use SNS's, from personal experience I use them as a way to augment my, admittedly limited, social life. Despite the risks, it is convenient to have a reminder that there is party coming up, who is going to be there and all of the necessary party details. It helps that a few of my closer friends and family members use Facebook, or I doubt I would ever use it, as researchers confirm (Java et al., 2007).

Conclusions
Despite my initial apprehension about using online social networking sites, I can see why they are popular and will continue to use them in the future. I still have concerns about what information I reveal and who may have access to it, but I think the risks, though quite real, are unlikely to affect me. As with all technology, it is the people that use that define its place in the world. SNS's are there to augment, not replace or diminish, one's current social life. After all, socialising can not be done with technology alone.

Bibliography
Bouman, W, Hoogenboom, T, Jansen, R, Schoondorp, M, de Bruin, B & Huizing, A 2008, 'The Realm of Sociality: Notes on the Design of Social Software', Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Systems, vol. 8, no. 1, pp.3-25.

Java, A, Song, X, Finin, T & Tseng, B 2007, 'Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities', Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop '07, August 12, San Jose, California, USA.

Krishnamurthy, B, Gill, P & Arlitt, M 2008, 'A Few Chirps About Twitter', WOSN'08, August 18, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Krishnamurthy, B & Wills, CE 2008, 'Characterising Privacy in Online Social Networks', WOSN'08, August 18, Seattle, Washington, USA.

Motahari, S, Manikopoulos, C, Hiltz, R & Jones, Q 2007, 'Seven Privacy Worries in Ubiquitous Social Computing', Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, July 18-20, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Narayanan, A & Shmatikov, V 2009, 'De-anonymizing Social Networks', http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0903/0903.3276v1.pdf, last viewed 3/04/2009.