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Announcing everything online
20/04/09 09:44 Filed in: Social
networking practice
I can’t tell you how relieved I was to read
this blog entry from Edelman.
Someone with a bit of clout has at last noticed
that a great many of us are using Twitter,
Facebook and loads of other stuff to announce
absolutely everything about ourselves to a
waiting world.
People have started to fall slightly foul of this, albeit nobody has confessed to anything too severe. A while back the estimable Twitterer Stephen Fry announced that he was stuck on a delayed flight, and when he arrived at the airport there were the paparazzi waiting to take his picture. OK, he’s a celebrity and if he announces his whereabouts in a public place he can take his chances, of course - he’s been perfectly affable about how he effectively set himself up for it in interviews since then.
More disturbingly, I’ve noticed a trend towards people mentioning that they’ve bought a swish new computer. I like doing that myself, although due to budgeting it’s going to be a while before I do it again (also due to the fact that the existing one works fine so I have no excuse for anything new and shiny, which is frustrating). But if I’d done so, would I announce it to the world? I think probably not, on balance - or at least I wouldn’t announce that and then tell everyone when I’m out for a meeting, or visiting family, as some people do. The connection between ‘I have something of high value in my house’ and ‘The house is now empty for a few hours’ seems not to occur to a number of individuals.
I could have missed something (please do let me know if I have) but I’m waiting for the first reports of robberies or other crimes committed by criminals using social networks in their planning. Call me a cynic, but don’t tell me you don’t agree. In the meantime I fully agree with Edelman’s call for some sort of social networking safety code - on which I will now be working for inclusion in my book. We’ve got to start monitoring what we’re doing online not only for success stories (which we like) but for undesired side effects too.
People have started to fall slightly foul of this, albeit nobody has confessed to anything too severe. A while back the estimable Twitterer Stephen Fry announced that he was stuck on a delayed flight, and when he arrived at the airport there were the paparazzi waiting to take his picture. OK, he’s a celebrity and if he announces his whereabouts in a public place he can take his chances, of course - he’s been perfectly affable about how he effectively set himself up for it in interviews since then.
More disturbingly, I’ve noticed a trend towards people mentioning that they’ve bought a swish new computer. I like doing that myself, although due to budgeting it’s going to be a while before I do it again (also due to the fact that the existing one works fine so I have no excuse for anything new and shiny, which is frustrating). But if I’d done so, would I announce it to the world? I think probably not, on balance - or at least I wouldn’t announce that and then tell everyone when I’m out for a meeting, or visiting family, as some people do. The connection between ‘I have something of high value in my house’ and ‘The house is now empty for a few hours’ seems not to occur to a number of individuals.
I could have missed something (please do let me know if I have) but I’m waiting for the first reports of robberies or other crimes committed by criminals using social networks in their planning. Call me a cynic, but don’t tell me you don’t agree. In the meantime I fully agree with Edelman’s call for some sort of social networking safety code - on which I will now be working for inclusion in my book. We’ve got to start monitoring what we’re doing online not only for success stories (which we like) but for undesired side effects too.
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