Privacy and anonymity are two hot button subjects. But for all the moral panic associated with it, very few people are making use of the privacy options available to them. On top of that, at the end of the day, privacy is not something you control anyway. It’s something contained within your network.

Facebook Privacy
The social network all of us are on (except for my friend Meg, whose graduate research includes online privacy. That’s telling.) Did you know that Facebook has over 140 privacy settings? Have you EVER looked into them? I mean really gone through and decided on some options?

Cartoon by @gapingvoid

Most haven’t. I can count on one hand the number of people I’m connected with on Facebook who have locked anything down. Yet most people freak out about what’s accessible about them online, and usually it’s pointing at Facebook as some evil source. Well, guess what? Facebook isn’t doing anything that’s completely new. Take, for example, the current outrage over photograph tagging.

Facebook’s new tool (well, it’s been around a while, it’s only just getting some press) suggests friends tag each other in uploaded images, based on facial recognition technology. This is not new. Facial recognition has been around for a long time. The quality of it is kind of dodgy – much like a cousin of voice-recognition software, but it’s not some new evil thing that Facebook dreamed up.

My issue is that yes, you should definitely be ensuring other people in your network are not tagging you in pictures, especially if they are unflattering or unfair – or even if they are not you! But you need to do more than that, and you should already have been doing it. You should look through the privacy settings. You should also make pictures you’re tagged in available only to friends on Facebook – and that’s if you only friend people you really know. Why? Most pictures uploaded to Facebook appear to be taken at parties and larger social gatherings. If you are not enthusiastic about every image of you coming up in a Google search being one where you have a beer/wine in your hand, blotchy cheeks, or worse – dancing on a table, then you should probably avoid them being taken, or at least avoid them being openly and easily Google-able.

On top of that, you need to be responsible as part of the social network too.

Stop tagging people
Yes, stop tagging other people in pictures. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. If you would like to be tagged, do it yourself, and give others the courtesy of tagging themselves too. Everyone has a different level of comfort with the amount of information out there in cyberspace about them. Don’t step on people’s toes by assuming they would like to be tagged. Unless the picture is of them with Brad Pitt. Then that’s totally fine.

Don’t out people’s locations
It’s pretty easy to work out where people are from the content of their tweets or posts. If it’s March and I’m saying I’m loving choosing my showbags, or complaining about the price of rides, you could guess that I’m at the Easter Show. But check-ins are not okay for anyone other than yourself. Brag about where you are, and that you’re with friends, sure. But if one of your friends has an AVO out against someone, they might not appreciate you saying exactly who you’re with and where you are. I’m guessing. (That’s another Facebook privacy setting, actually. You might want to look into that.)

Ultimately, your privacy online is about as reliable as keeping a private journal and leaving it in a library, hoping nobody reads it. Luckily for most of us, people could care less most of the time. We’re all so fixated on ourselves we don’t have time to stalk other people. But it helps both you and others in your social network to ensure you lock down some parts of your online presence a little – it might give you the extra five minutes, or a few google page views down, that could mean getting the job you wanted, or stopping that freaky stalker from coming within five feet of you. And that’s got to be a good thing.

Privacy Settings: to stop people from tagging your image and location in Facebook
1. Go to your front page, and click on Account which is on the top right hand corner.
2. From the drop-down menu, click Privacy Settings.
3. At the bottom of the table, click Customize Settings.
4. Scroll down to Things Others Share, and change “Suggest photos of me to friends” and “Friends can check me into places” to a setting you’re comfortable with.
5. Explore other areas of Facebook’s privacy settings, and make other changes you feel necessary.

Related posts:

1. I see dead people. On Facebook.

Erika Doss’s work on memorialisation is an interesting foray into how western societies consider death. We are used to seeing memorials offline, from crosses at the sides of roads through to war memorials, and everything in between. We even see memorialisation happening online. But do we carry the human values of our offline existence online? Do our values look the same online as they do offline? And can we solve some of our society’s problems in dealing with death through the integration of memorials in technological spaces?

Pic: Flickr, Bennylin0724.

If we are, as Doss says, a “death-denying society” – one in which we’ve managed to ensure people die in locations we are ready to accept it occurs (66% of people die in hospitals, hospices or the like), then our obsession with social media might give us an opportunity to forge a better relationship with the topic of death.

Some cultures celebrate death as any other rite of passage. But in our Western culture, we ‘other’ death. It’s a taboo subject.

At CHI2011, a whole session was dedicated to the topic of death and bereavement and a few researchers are making headway into this interesting topic. However, I am left thinking that our work needs to look at opportunities in considering societal issues with taboo subjects using the social media spaces our society is already embracing rather than creating new sites and tools that people are ready to ‘other’ (distance themselves, or create a distinction between themselves and that place or those people) just as they do nursing homes and hospices.

Facebook allows you to memorialise the dead, but it doesn't suit everyone

So while Facebook continues to have problems with managing the fact that its user base will die – really die – we all have to address what we want to have happen with our social media accounts when we fall off the twig. The first place to consider how we want to have our social media lives finish up or continue, is to recognise how we feel about the people in our current friends lists on social media sites still being there when they physically pass on. Most people I know have at least one deceased person in their Facebook friends list. Nobody unfriends them. They just sit there. Living alongside all the other vibrant people in your stream, yet not. Typically, if it makes you uncomfortable to see faces of people you know are no longer physically operating their own account, then you’re unlikely to want that to happen to you. But at the same time, it seems harsh to unfriend or even just silence that person’s stream.

Do you have people in your Facebook stream you know are now deceased, and how do you manage it?

Related posts:

1. How to avoid people using location-based social media
2. Facebook Privacy – when did you last update your settings?
3. So I’m about to become known as that woman who researches death in social media.

My dissertation topic is coming together. What a fun little journey (also known as screwing with my mind) this is.

I research social media. I’ve written a paper on the best way to construct a tweet. I watch how people use their streams. I’m interested in how they construct their online lives, communities and identities. The stories (lies) people tell; the release people feel in ‘oversharing’; the flirting; the stupidity; the bravery. How people create, condition, and curate their intertwingled on- and offline lives. I’m the Penn and Teller of social media. (Probably the Penn. Because the other one doesn’t speak. That’s totally not me.

I’m not sure how I fell into the death realm. I’ve decided, though, that this will be my area of adventure for the dissertation. It’s fascinating. While we all know the ‘proper’ behaviours and practices when you physically die (the ulitmate form of identity management), today we need to get our heads around what will happen to your social media representations when you pass away. We haven’t prepared ourselves for this – people have online lives, and these don’t stop when you do.

Facebook initiated a Facebook Memorial Page where loved ones of the deceased can opt to have the page effectively closed, but still visible. It’s getting a heap of flack on that – mainly because it’s difficult to ensure the person moderating the page is who they say they are. Some people think they want their page closed down, others want them to remain. It’s not easy.

I’m considering three areas of death in social media:

1. The appropriation of your social media profile to become akin to a memorial upon your passing. How the community, friends, etc engage with each other, and with the ongoing digital representation of the deceased.

2. People who commit what has become known as ‘virtual suicide’. The closing down of all social media profiles (and commonly, reopening them). This is a great way of controlling identity both on and offline. Check out the suicide machine for a little more of this.

3. Finally, the people who use social media as a part of their offline suicide toolkit. Posting status updates as they say goodbye and end their lives, or live broadcasting it in social media.

Right now I’m engaging with the 1st one. I’ve developed a research proposal to examine Facebook’s Memorial Pages. I’ve got a list of reading as long as my arm – including areas as diverse as post mortem photography and roadside memorials as well as the scant work done in HCI so far in this area - thanatosensitive design, which is what I’m seeking to write in.

Interestingly, one paper says that it’s not trying to say we should design for the dead. I laughed out loud at that. But two weeks later, while walking the dog this morning, I realised that is exactly what we do need to do. We need to design for the dead as well as for the living. (Have I weirded you out yet?) My thinking is that if identity continues in social media after death (even if it’s managed by a loved one, which is common) then there is also agency that continues. We need to create design, spaces and opportunities for the dead to engage. And suddenly dead gets inverted commas around it. ‘Dead’. Because when you die, you don’t really. Jed says this makes me a “freaky weird kind of person.” I’m cool with that.

Yeah, I think you want to invite me to dinner parties. Meanwhile, ponder this – there are over 3 million dead people with Facebook pages. What do you want to have happen to yours when you pass away, and how will you prepare for it?

Related posts:

1. Why your small business needs a social media plan
2. Should some brands stay out of social media?
3. How to avoid people using location-based social media

Is it possible that your online communities (Facebook, Twitter, etc) are more important to you, and that you share more with them than the offline communities you are part of?

Research has shown that we feel more strongly about people online than we do offline. Sometimes, I suppose those feelings are based on very little detailed information. Nevertheless, the (somewhat disputed) assertion that today, two out of every 10 marriages in the US evolve from an online dating site (I’d guess it’s actually higher than that but not recorded because I think many people meet online first, just not on dating sites) means that all of us connect real, tangible feelings to our online communities – whether or not we went there to find attachments of the heart.

Photo: Flickr by lovelypetal under Creative Commons License 2.0

Plenty of people have real emotional connections with those they’ve never physically met. Some feel so connected with their online communities, they feel compelled to share their most heart-wrenching, private thoughts and experiences. When, for example, a mother shares the incredibly difficult experience of losing her spouse with the online world, this is not because she’s defective or lacking in offline relationships. It’s because she feels a real, personal, connection to the people in her online community. She knows them as a group. She gives out loving connection in the form of her painful honesty, and hopes for the same in return. She seeks more than just sympathy. She seeks resonance.

This is not a technological construct. It’s actually human centered computing at it’s most obvious. It’s very, very real.

Arguably, this connection of the mind and heart is more ‘real’ than the connections we have offline. Far more real than the connections with neighbours we say hi to each day, but little else.

More real are these connections, than the ones many say we ‘should’ be having.

But the fact is, we have been disengaged with offline communities for a long time. Neighbourhoods are largely dead. I am interested in doing a research paper on how many times newspapers report quotes from people who live in the vicinity of victims of domestic violence, who use the phrases, “they kept to themselves” or “they were a quiet family.”

Why do we connect with the heart online?

Other research, by Dan Ariely, talks about the IKEA effect. This theory says we attribute a greater sense of emotional attachment to things we build ourselves, and hold onto them even though the product is well, not entirely the best produced item ever. He calls it the IKEA effect. While I totally agree that it makes sense that we would feel greater attachment to things we build ourselves, I’m not convinced it’s that simple. In his study, he built an IKEA toy box for his son. That’s the connection. Our relationships, not things, are the reason we have bigger connections. They ‘why’ you’re building it matters more so than simply building it.

Or is it?

When instant cake mixes were introduced to the market in the 1950′s, they did not do well. Housewives (the market) felt that the mixes didn’t make their efforts easier, but that they undermined their effort and commitment to their families (the people they were making the cakes for). Adjustments were made to the mixes so they required the addition of an egg. And sales increased. That was the thing – make it easier for us, but don’t take away our involvement completely – it’s for our families – after all, that’s our identity.

I still know women who have ridiculous work and family schedules, and insist on cooking personally for bake sales, family events, and so on – even if it means staying up until 3am when a store-bought cake would have been perfectly acceptable.

Your online community

So what does all this mean for your online community? You build it, like an IKEA product. But you’re building it for you. Is it possible that the community you’re creating is a reflection of how much you value yourself? Do you want to just buy in to pre-made communities like Ning groups, or do we value the ones we spend our own time on more, like your personal groups on Twitter and Facebook? And where does your blogging community come in?

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1. Do online communities pretend to care?
2. NestleFamily, breastfeeding and social media
3. The latent sphere of the network society

Jed: How old are you this year?

Me: I’m 27.

Jed: Oh thank goodness. You’ve been 24 for 15 years now. Glad to see you’ve decided to move on.

Me: I have not. I’ve been 27 for a while. I embrace my age.

Jed: Yes. Yes you do. Especially when your daughter is catching up with you.

Me: I could totally have given birth at 9. That happened in China or something. It’s because I went to an all-girls high school. I married very young. Anyway, don’t give me grief, it’s my birthday. I’m 27. Where’s my cake?

It’s easy to think that after a certain age, your life should be something to look back on each birthday and reflect with a self-satisfied grin. It should be about chocolate, wine, good friends and a drunken refrain of “My Way.”

I love Halloween!

I’m not doing that.

This is the second birthday I’ve had in the US. Each birthday I’m reminded of the people, animals and things I miss. While their love surrounds me still, I wish I had Max and Bec here with me. My mum and dad. My dogs. And yes, even my stuff that’s in storage in Sydney. (Because I’m that shallow. Back off.)

But this year is better than last. I am being literally flooded with birthday wishes through social media of all forms, including people who are very special to me, and whom I’ve met while living here. While I’m on the US leg of my life. My mum sent me a spectacular handmade card and my brother and his family will skype with me from Sydney. My daughter chats with me from Armidale, country NSW. My cousins and friends wish me cheeky happy birthdays from London. And I am thrilled that I have friends doing the same, from all across the USA.

Social media means I don’t feel as displaced as I could be.

I’m still rather teary, but I’m still doing it my way. I’m not ready to reflect yet. The journey is still happening. I’m looking forward.

The fact I have no idea where I’ll be living this time next year, but that I have so many things bouncing around, shows that I’m at a high point. And I’m very lucky to have good friends and family all around the world who care.

I can’t wait to see my family and friends in Sydney in 78 days – I miss holding them and seeing them face to face. I’m looking forward to the opportunities that are coming up everywhere. I’m busier than ever.

Some things are different. I have found I love winter most of all in Colorado, and I love summer most of all in Sydney. (Extreme much?) However, some things haven’t changed. I still want to lose 10 kg (20 pds). But I still want cake.

And so it goes. Wherever you are in the world, whatever your time zone, we are connected. A click away.

Related posts:

1. Why your small business needs a social media plan
2. So I’m about to become known as that woman who researches death in social media.
3. NestleFamily, breastfeeding and social media

Word of Mouth has always been a double-edged sword for small business. I remember the saying  a local fish and chip shop had on their wall. “If you like our food, tell your friends. If you don’t like it, tell us!”

Once upon a time, the worst that could happen would be a letter to the editor of the local paper. With a 24 hour news cycle, the bad news would pass and your business could weather the storm.

In today’s social media world, it’s different.

Up to now, it’s been easy for small businesses to say social media was something they’d like to dabble in, but it wasn’t necessary to really put too much time into. It was a fun thing, or a sideline to their other communication tools.

Today businesses of all sizes need to be examining their online presence. Think of your customers. How many of them do you think have Facebook accounts? All it takes is one status update that says negative things about your business, and suddenly you’re suffering. How about this status update, posted by someone with 30 friends who lives in a rural area with a tiny population:

“Ugh. Feeling very sick after greasy fish and chips from Big Joe’s.”

Picture credit: Flickr Creative Commons http://bit.ly/dg3sD2 http://bit.ly/9NHDJC

How many of that person’s 30 friends do you think live in that same rural area? The same rural area that Big Joe’s counts on customers for? And how much weight do you think those 30 friends put on the opinion of the person who posted the status update?

A lot.

Word of Mouth (or WOM) carries the most powerful advertising impact of all the different forms of promotion you could use. And it spreads like wildfire.

“Sorry to hear about Big Joe’s big grease up.” “Get well soon, buddy.” “Won’t be going there again.”

Imagine now, that you are the proprietor of Big Joe’s, and you are one of the friends of this status poster. Not only would you know the negative post existed, but you’d also have an opportunity to find out more about why they were feeling ill, and possibly begin a conversation that made people think you were interested in doing good business, instead of thinking you’re a shop dealing in food poisoning.

Today, everyone is on social media. And everyone has influence. Time to claim yours.

Related posts:

1. Should some brands stay out of social media?
2. So I’m about to become known as that woman who researches death in social media.
3. Glade's sweet smell of good social media PR with Edelman