Work/Blog/Life: Facebook makes separating them harder
By AndrewBoyd • Oct 17th, 2007 • Category: Blogging tipsI’ve got this love/hate relationship with Facebook. Initially I railed against it, then I joined in and loved it, and now I’m mostly over it.
A lot of us have different sets of friends on Facebook. Myself, I have information architecture friends, SMS colleagues, people I’ve known online for years, and other bloggers I’ve met in the past six months. There is some overlap between the groups (especially amongst the SMS IAs who blog!)
Facebook has a problem loophole at the moment - developers can release an application that keeps sending invitations to your whole address book without telling you about it. You accept an application invitation, resend it to those friends you think might like to join in, and then proceed to use the application. Sounds OK? What if the application sent out invitations to your whole address book, whether you wanted it to or not?
Imagine I accept an application invite from a well-meaning and open-minded friend that is definitely in the NSFW (not suitable for work) category and this then spams my whole address book. I really don’t want senior consulting company or client contacts to get a dating application invitation from me, or be double-dared to admit the riskiest places that they’ve had sex. Nor do I want these invitations to be sent on my behalf to casual acquaintances or people I only know online. Do I want to flirt with people online? Whether I do or not, this should be my choice.
I presented on social computing to a group of recruitment specialists on Monday this week - one lady said that she’d had replies from people on Facebook applications that she didn’t recall agreeing to install - a scary thought, especially given the above spam loophole.
Facebook currently makes it harder to keep work, blogging and life separated. Perhaps this is where the world is going, but I am not sure that it is a good thing.
What do you think? Is this Facebook loophole a danger to the trust relationships we rely on in social computing? Or would you ignore an “Are you interested?” invite from someone that you barely know without wondering why you received it?
AndrewBoyd is a consultant by day and blogger by night. He loves good food, good wine, and discussing faceted classification schemes with friends.
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This is a worry and I have been concerned about privacy and work/personal separation. More customization is needed to allow certain people/groups to see certain things.
Facebook is a useful tool for networking and communicating with colleagues and to establish contact with others but, as it is widely popular, it is a valuable way for me to keep up with friends and relatives overseas. I have been considering a separate profile for personal contacts so that I can accept and install the less serious applications I am invited to. By turning them down I am concerned about offending.
Privacy concerns restrict the usefulness of Facebook for me. I turn down those I would accept in other social networking applications. The appeal of Facebook has increased for me over time but it is not the all in one solution I hoped it would be.
Hi Sue,
thank you for your comment
Facebook is a weird mix of open-ness and prudery - you are encouraged to flirt shamelessly by dozens of different dating applications yet a photo of a breastfeeding woman is banned (in a way it is a microcosm of US society I guess).
I’ve started to ignore some application spam - I’ve stopped playing so much on Facebook (but I still mostly respond to hugs, because you can never have too many hugs).
I agree entirely with you that Facebook is not the “One platform to rule them all” that was promised.
Thank you once again for your comment.
Best regards, Andrew