Facebook

[Cataboo]

I ditched Facebook a year ago and I never looked back. I had 49 or so "friends," all of whom I actually knew. I sent a personal email to each one of them with my contact information: email, phone, and mailing address. I had exactly ONE person actually contact me. One.

I am so much happier spending my time working in my garden, riding my bike, doing Pilates and yoga, reading books, and training my dog. I talk to my real friends on the phone and even visit them in person. I bake bread and learn foreign languages. My life is so rich and full, and I'm not missing a thing and not wasting my time late into the night on the computer.

YMMV

I emailed you a little bit after you ditched facebook! I'm two, really!

[Mr. Bloom]

My FB post this morning states:

I find it disturbing that, while looking on a Washington Post news site, I see WP articles posted on FB by FB friends. This demonstrates a much higher level of integration in nonaffiliated sites than I think is healthy....hmmmmm

I think I have a decision to make...even if I have nothing to hide, this seems intuitively dangerous

[OakLeaf]

Just disallow that FB script when you're not actually on FB...

I'm serious, anyone who's concerned about privacy, even on the level of being creeped out, should control the scripts that are running on their computer. It's a little bit of a pain, but you don't need any technical knowledge, just the experience of messing with the controls for a couple of days.

[NbyNW]

My FB post this morning states:

I find it disturbing that, while looking on a Washington Post news site, I see WP articles posted on FB by FB friends. This demonstrates a much higher level of integration in nonaffiliated sites than I think is healthy....hmmmmm

I think I have a decision to make...even if I have nothing to hide, this seems intuitively dangerous

I've been wondering about this lately too. If you can figure out how to disable it, I'd love to know how!

[emily_in_nc]

I've got all Apps & Websites turned off in FB. It's under your account -> privacy settings, and should prevent the behavior you're concerned about, Mr. B.

[Mr. Bloom]

This happened on my iPad where I haven't found an ability to disable scripts but I'm still researching...

Here's the thing I see as dangerous:
- I get privacy issues...ironically this doesn't bother me since I'm not doing anything I'd be ashamed of...
- but, now that I've seen the "dots connected", I see an ability for an uninformed third party to draw incorrect presumptions about me simply by my association with folks who do certain things or post links to other things...

In a "McCartney-esk" world, this could be a bad thing whether or not I disable scripts or not...where I might be held accountable, by association, for the actions/beliefs of casual friends and acquaintances that I may share little in common with...except that I let them into my "FB tent"

[Mr. Bloom]

Thanks Emily. I was typing the last post while you posted yours. I've gone into the privacy settings and made changes, but I'm not sure yet that those changes address my concern...more to follow.

This may toll the end of my days on FB...I see it as that big an issue...not in the context of the world as it us, but rather a world that might be...

...maybe I'm just being too Orwellian

[OakLeaf]

Yeah, disabling apps won't stop the scripts from running, and you're right, I don't know any easy way to disable individual scripts on an iPad. I'm sure it can be done, but you might have to root the device, which would void the warranty, and is not for the faint of heart anyway.

You can disable Java entirely under your Safari settings, but there are a lot of sites that require it. The iPad doesn't do Flash, which is inconvenient sometimes, but is one less thing to worry about.

Also remember to delete your browsing and search history (also in Settings:Safari). One of the things that a lot of the tracking scripts do is read your history. The more often you delete it, the less they can see.

[WindingRoad]

Kinda glad I don't have my account any longer to worry about all of this I am amazed how much I accomplished this past weekend with no facebook to distract me! I seriously did not think FB was a problem but it can so easily get out of hand. Use it with caution. Unfortunately I am unable to do that so cold turkey seems the only approach for me. I deleted that app from my iPhone too and I find myself not having the urge to compulsively check my phone now. This was long overdue.

[shootingstar]

For people whose primary paid jobs is to demonstrate how to manage information at an advanced level by using certain web technology tools, one does have abit of published stuff on the Internet. In my field, employers expect it and would question a candidate's basic technical as well as conceptual (by subject area) ability.

So I will say....blogging is a very simple content management technology, that does not offer the same robustness or scaleability as other content management software technologies. But I could only claim this the best...by actually blogging, using Wordpress and its different versions (.com vs. self-hosted .org versions) and comparing it with other technologies where I have both planning and implementation expertise.

So in a way for me not to use FB, I might be not enhancing my skill set since blog content can be pushed into one's own FB. However, I still think FB technology is more of a communication and distribution tool instead of a sophisticated content management tool. It appears to me, unless someone can tell me differently, that capacity to search FB content is extremely limited. Same for Twitter which is worse because of the 140 character limit which only creates cryptic messages of little value in a few months.

Certainly people's careers that involve marketing, they should become familiar with FB and Twitter (another tool, which has limited distribution capacity. It's greatest strength like FB is speed and ubiquity, provided the planned target audience also has FB and Twitter). I know that many of colleagues are Twittering from conferences, etc. Am I missing out on the scuttlebut? Well, I'm only interested, in the end, the published stuff or phone/face-to-face networking. Even on listserves, people on the job don't have time to use their professional association listserves, internet forums, etc.

Virtual collaboration and communication on the job and related to one's job, is great if there's time and if your employer pays you to use some of it, even if only in a targeted way.

I'm just explaining my position from a career/job standpoint as somone steeped in information management for most of my career.