Matt Archer's Weblog

It has obviously been some time since I regularly posted to my blog, but with the emerging world of social media linking every facet of our lives, I felt that it was well overdue to re-enter the blogosphere.

While we have been naively signing up friends on Facebook, building business networks with LinkedIn, playing around with twitter and sending email from one of many email accounts we may have, unbeknownst to us we are being profiled. The people we are communicating with electronically are tagging us as friends, saving us as email contacts. or building us into their social networks.   While we may look after our own security settings, we have no control over how they announce us or secure their data.  Then we have companies like www.xobni.com that are tying all these connections together to create these “one point of separation” networks (to make things easier don’t you know..).  Whether you like it or not, these websites are profiling you in order to sell their connection services. At the same time Facebook is continually pushing their service as a media hosting service and encouraging you to make your content “PUBLIC” so it can be linked to..  however with each level of security loosening, we are allowing ourselves to be further profiled and defined.

Problem or blessing?  Well it depends on how public you wish your life to be.  If you are not so bothered about people drawing summary conclusions about who you are and what your competencies in life amount to, then you may well be throwing yourself at everything with aplomb without thinking.. Possibly sharing with the world everything from your dinner preferences through to how your boss made you feel yesterday.  People will draw their own conclusions about you from both the content you share, and how their own personal biases engage off your content.  You will make friends without realising it while other relationships will be denied you without apparent reason.. The internet world is now offered the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about you without ever meeting you.  But wait a minute Matt, I wrote that on my private twitter account, it was never meant for my LinkedIn contacts to read.  Well unfortunately companies like XOBNI are totally committed to connecting the dots about you and will use their massively growing database to to so.   The Matt Archer that emailed his Mum from his private Hotmail account, had both his work and personal addresses saved in his Mum’s contact list against his name.  So when his Mum joins XOBNI then this little link is made in their database, and potentially all of Matt’s LinkedIn contacts have access to his personal email address. Privacy over.

All of a sudden that stupid twitter account we used our work email to sign up to, starts feeling like a stupid tattoo we got when we were young and stupid;  except this may last for a heck of a lot longer.

So what does one do?

Well as far as I am concerned you have one of three options.

1. Get off the Grid

• Don’t use Facebook, Don’t use Twitter, Don’t use email, Don’t use YouTube, Don’t create any form of digital identity that can be used to profile you. (Possibly not the most practical option)

2. Don’t worry about it

• Jump on the next social network craze.. make everything public, don’t read the fine print of membership, let all your programs publish without permission.  (Please remove me from your contact lists before doing this so I don’t get the viruses)

3. Be cautious, Read the fine print and segment off your social networks

• Firstly assume that any new social media service exists for the sole purpose to make the owners of it billionaires.  Your life is the tool they need to get leverage for the big buy out they are living every moment for. Get comfortable with this or take option 1.
• Once you are comfortable with this fact, look to use the new tool for your own benefit, not necessarily the way “it is meant to run”.
• This means things like if you are going to use Facebook, then only friend people you like and are happy to read about your last family outing on the beach (as this is what Facebook is best at). DO NOT MAKE EVERYTHING PUBLIC.  Friends of Friends is generally public enough without signing your life over to the marketing team of Facebook.
• Likewise just because your mate’s son has found LinkedIn and at the age of 15 wants to be a businessman, it doesn’t mean you should allow him to join your professional network and post whatever he wants to your business contacts.
• Finally I would use a different email address for business contacts than personal.  This line of separation will keep you from breaching typical work use employment guidelines, and will also allow you to let down your hair if you want to in a social context.  You have to be disciplined to maintain segmentation or your indexing will undermine any effort you make in this area.

4. Write your own press statement

• If we assume that we will be eventually indexed and profiled, then write the story before it is written for you.  Get on Facebook but segment it off to family and friends.  Get on LinkedIn and make sure it is up to date with your experience and what you want people to read about you.  If you are a popular person with lots of contacts, get on Twitter, create a blog, link these things yourself.  This will stop the robots getting it wrong and linking you to some idiot in Iowa who farms chickens.

Bottom line as I see it, is that privacy is a dying concept. We need to be aware that even our best efforts will be (eventually) undermined by another’s lack of understanding or care factor.  We live in an age where it has never been easier to communicate, but at the same time never harder to be (unbiasedly) heard.