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Hey, this is the archive section. Pick a year, pick a month, have a nosey.Shortie
Social Media Suicide
17-05-2010Years and years from now we may look back on 2010 as the year that Facebook committed suicide. There is no other way to describe it, the king of social media has made mistake after mistake in terms of privacy in order to make a faster million bucks or two. These mistakes could very well lead to the downfall and death of the one time 'be all and end all of all things new media.'
Privacy on Facebook is becoming harder and harder to maintain as the company makes your information freely available to the highest bidder. Recently Facebook has revised its privacy policy to require users to OPT OUT if they wish to keep information private, making most of that information public by default. Some personal data is now being shared with third-party Web sites - the pop up ads on the side of your Facebook page are generated on information provided on you by Facebook.
The opt out idea is indeed a very controversial one as many of the 400 million Facebook users do not fully understand the privacy settings which involve far too many steps as you try and choose which information to keep private and which to make available - a bewildering process to maintain a bit of privacy and the Social Media King is coming under a lot of fire from all angles.
I noticed yesterday that even AFTER I have logged out of my Facebook account it followed me to Sky News and invited me to post the article I was viewing onto my page - an in-depth cyber trail on my account which I had previously locked down. I revised my Facebook account again yesterday and after clicking through more than 50 privacy buttons, and then choosing among a total of more than 170 options I finally have opted out to the bare minimum of information available.
I now have a work account as part of which all work related information is available and my pictures posted are purely professional and I am not tagged in any personal slightly more incriminating pictures. After all I manage social media accounts for several clients and the last thing I am sure any of them want to see is a picture of me pissed as a fart on a Saturday night trying to eat subway in a phone box. Hell most of the time even I don't want to see it.
I managed to come across an interesting image online for those of you who wish to review your privacy settings, I have uploaded it below (hopefully - my site can be temperamental sometimes) should you wish to check it out for yourself.
A few words of advice though, if you wish to review your privacy settings and created a social media lock down on the information available, I suggest you free up an hour of your time to click, select and press as there are a hell of a lot of settings. For any PR workers out there or anyone who has to manage social media as part of their job, I suggest setting up a 'work account' and only include information you would be happy having your employers / employees and or clients viewing.
Tags: meanderings pr stuff
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