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6 November 2007

Changing private spheres and other issues

Online social networks and other applications have changed our private spheres. That is, information that was formerly only shared with friends close to us (e.g. those holiday and party pictures, our daily mood) are now distributed with all those that are part of our network or beyond. Because these networks not only include our closest friends but also random acquaintances the boundaries of private spheres are beginning to blur. In particular this applies to OSNs that offer a wider range of functionalities like picture sharing. Of course this observation is not new and has probably been addressed by Danah Boyd and others. Yet I would still like to reflect on some issues which have been on my mind and which might add to the discussion.

Will future generations have a different perception of privacy?
Social software is a nightmare for all those that have been trying to protect an individual's privacy for all those years. Warnings of putting too much personal information online can not only be found in the discourse on the issue but also be derived from real life examples (e.g. Drunken pirate). However, if there is one thing that separates the younger generations (22 and below) from those in their late twenties and beyond it is the willingness to share what the latter consider private. From my point of view this aspect is very important. Most of today's discussion is based on the normative believes on privacy developed by a generation that grew up without social software. Whether this should remain the position of the generations to come is again a question to be discussed. May be it won't remain the position of future generations. Because they might have the tendency to share more "private" information than less. So that in 10 to 20 years from now there will be so much "private" information available that the value of that kind of information changes. For example, the picture of some alcohol excess won't be of interest to HR managers who now seem to develop the habit to screen the OSN behavior of their candidates. Personal information that is public and that is of not much interest to the public loses its value (e.g. to the journalist who aims at revealing a "dark" past in his social engineering efforts). Because one reason for the tabloids out there to exist is the basic human curiosity in personal/secret information of other individuals. Personal information might also not exactly lose its value because that might depend on everyoneour norms and cultural background. On the other hand this prediction might be wrong if we consider in the NYT of last September. It showed that "even among the MySpace generation, there is such a thing as too much information." Along these lines the blog entry on reputational mortality might also be of interest to our readers. Moreover, the trend to reveal private information might make those that will be able to leave no electronic trail to be of greater interest.

The awkward impact of networking behavior in OSN on social relationships.
A friend recently told me about someone who requested to be connected in an OSN after they got to know each other during a party. My friend decided to grant the person only limited access to the personal profile. In particular the pictures. It didn't take long and my friend received an email from that person complaining about the lack of access to the kind of information. The behavior of my friend - I would consider it quite normal - was interpreted as a clear act of distrust. I am sure by now many of us have already struggled with these problems that did not exist in the pre-OSN era. In the past you might have had a conversation but never exchanged addresses. Contacts many times remained one-time coincidences. Many times there was a reason why we chose to walk down this path. Now its common for oneself or others to search for the names of all the newly acquired acquaintances in the various OSN and request to be connected after some kind of event. How a network is used depends on the individual. Some prefer to keep it as an exact replica of their offline networks (stronger ties). Others simply use OSN as a basket to accumulate any kind of person they meet. Furthermore, the design of the OSN has an influence on the struggles a member might get into in the offline world. Business networks like Xing or LinkedIn probably result in less difficulties than Facebook and its offsprings. Because the latter allow to present much more personal information which also increases everyone's expectations to share that information. Thus the differentiation between closer friends and acquaintances becomes much more obvious. Furthermore, what happens if you decline a connection. We know its a small world out there so may be that decline will come back at oneself in the future...it seems we all need to develop new skills and strategies in shipping through these uncharted waters.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at November 6, 2007 3:22 AM

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Posted by: Thomas Langenberg at November 8, 2007 4:25 AM

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