EuroPoli

This week has been dedicated pretty much entirely to revise my online presence.

Now, if you google my name, the first result is my LinkedIn profile.  Go head, try it! At the same time I brought this site online after a while of it being dead. Why was it dead you ask? Well, simply because I was dedicating my days, nights and weekends to my work and studies, and following a bug with one of the applets/widgets I decided I didn’t have time to bring it back up… how wrong I was! Additionally, I was working on the TeamBookTwo site, for the Timbuktu Challenge and my newest site “EoVita” (it’s not linked for a reason… EoVita isn’t “live” yet… it’s a work in progress, still working on a framework admin interface whereby I can update it from anywhere in the world, including mobile apps – the idea is that I can then port this to all my sites).

Either way, time to reinvent my online presence. I’ve (finally) created a Twitter profile, albeit not really for myself… again it’s for the Timbuktu Challenge. None-the-less, it’s there. So, checklist time:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• FaceBook
• Website(s)
• Google rank

All check…

Now, this is the interesting part… You may be wondering what any of this has to do with security, or why I’m divulging so much personal information. Don’t all these social networking sites have a horrific impact on our privacy, our safety and ultimately expose us to risk?

Well, let’s have that discussion.

While online social networking does expose us to risk (no doubt about it), it does have it’s advantages. Like everything in life, you need to weight the benefits versus the “costs” and decide if it’s really for you.

Cons (i.e. The Cost)

• While most social networking sites offer “free” services, they are supported in some way or form financially. Most offer an “elite” subscription in addition to generating revenue through targetted advertising. As such, there is a risk of your data going to random companies who buy into the advertising
• Loss of privacy
• Potential for identity theft
• “Big brother sydrome” For those of you that know of Asimov’s “Frankenstein Complex” or Mori’s “Uncanny Valley” this is my addition to the field. In a nutshell, people fear the unknown. It’s a simple fallback from evolution. As such, the lack of clear, concise information around the risks posed by social networking cause an interesting response. At first, people accept social networking with doubts. This then becomes pseudo-addiction. This can continue until something happens, which is large enough to “jolt” them out of the cycle. That said, if presented with infromation about the risks before the addiction phase, there is an almost irrational fear of “what may go wrong” without actually thinking about the benefits. A very similar scenario to cars speeding actually (think about it, if all cars were restricted to 10mph, deaths on the road would fall drammatically! Yet, if  we did that, our transport network would pretty much collapse. So we decide to take the calculated risk of allowing people to drive at 70mph, in return for the benefits).

Pro (i.e. The Benefits):

• Targetted advertising offers advantages to the buyer as well. Instead of hair-loss cures, since my age went on FaceBook (albeit with a different day from the real one) I’ve increasingly been offered for solutions on getting a 6-pack rather than curing my hairloss…
• Keep in contact with people. This one is crucial. I get quite often “why don’t you call them?” or “They aren’t really friends if you don’t see them once a week/month/etc”. Well, when you have a background as international as mine, I can name friends that have moved to every continent bar Antartica. Visiting everyone once a month would leave me no time outside of an airplane… and calling them all is quite impractical given time differences!
• Networking… more about this later

So… networking… How much of a benefit is it to you?

This post is staring to drag on, so I’ll continue another time. In the meantime, I’ll leave this open-ended… halfway through my discussion!

M.

Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at 9:58 am • General • RSS 2.0 feed • leave a response or trackback