My sister finally joined LinkedIn recently. Unbeknownst to her, every update she makes is shared with all of her connections. Distraught with this unanticipated exposure, she pleaded to me to fix this injustice. Visit the privacy settings I suggested to her. Good luck I smirked.
Long-time users may be familiar with the weekly emails you receive detailing people in your network who recently added new jobs, skills, and other changes to their profile.
Kevin Doodle is now a Product Development intern at Facebook.
“Seriously? Kevin works at Facebook now? Must’ve gotten the gig because of all that time he spends liking pictures of girls.”
Mary Jane is now connected to John Wilmer and 100 other people.
“What a snob.”
I will shamelessly admit that I religiously follow these emails as a way to covertly spy on my fellow classmates, friends, former co-workers. Go ahead, you can admit it too. I won’t judge you.
When stalking people on the Internet backfires
Years ago, anonymity still existed to a certain degree on the web. That has changed dramatically over the years as social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare has made it easier than ever to share the most intimate details of our lives, oftentimes without us even knowing.
Facebook is often the banner child for this upheaval in how we view privacy. No one imagined that we would be “checking in” to places from our phones when we went out. We said that it would be a gigantic invasion of privacy and refused to believe that our friends had any interest in where we were. Oh, how times have changed.
The social network will only continue to seep deeper into every fabric of our lives, and in some unfortunate instances, broadcasts it for everyone to see.
Thinking about updating your relationship status? Some couples would rather not, foresaking the potential embarrassment months down the road when things turn south in the relationship.
The decision to choose what we want to share is increasingly being wrested from us. One of the reasons why I dislike apps that want you to sign up using your Facebook account is that they often seek your permission to post your activity to your news feed. Have you noticed the recent Socialcam spam in your feed? Shudders.
This trend needs to go away now.
Facebook in 5 years
Who knows what the web will look like 5 years from now. If Facebook is still around then, I certainly hope my activity feed doesn’t look like this:
Your ex-girlfriend visited your profile ten times today.
David Maine viewed and downloaded 56 photos from Layla Lovebottom’s photos.
Your cat Snuffles joined Facebook today. Add him as a friend.
Leslie Gooding(the girl you like) is no longer friends with you on Facebook and in real life.
