digital presence, too much?...

News that Facebook has partnered with Ziddio.com, so users can share videos and, in true media-generated and exploitative tv mania, potentially become part of a new tv series entitled 'Facebook Diaries'.

Commencing in March this year, the sharing of videos is not new online, YouTube, MySpace and so forth all have potential ways and means to visualise and press and play. Treating users as 'contestants' for a reality show is a new direction and poses new questions as to association of privacy and security online, or perhaps, as I am increasinginly finding when talking to users of Facebook this is an issue that either they have failed to recognise, or choose for the most part to ignore.

Jones, H. and Soltren, J.H. ‘Facebook: Threats to Privacy’, article December 2005 found that a substantial proportion of students shared identifiable and personal information on the site. Further users were more than willing to share personal contact details, indicate their high schools, friends, interests etc. Unsurprisingly the most active of users disclosed the most, and as i am finding with my own research the most 'well-connected' and digitally available of users have the least concerns in terms of their own privacy and level of use and availability. In fact the constant level of connectedness is considered the 'norm'. The increasing levels of 'exposure' of the self across such sites, through 'googling' and 'all the time' availability through mobile phones means that the 'demands' on the individual in terms of sociability are becoming more ubiquitous and, for university students, form an essential part of the university experience. Further, as the array of digital and mobile communication devices increases the levels of disclosure and social network links are likely to rise. Alongside this the 'reachability' and associated social behaviour means that the such levels of information indviduals have about one another means that people not only carry with them their social lives, but are also connected and 'in touch' even when away, or not logged in to their networks. In this way users can be seen to an ever-present and sociable person even when sat on the bus, in class, or in places, or at times when previously they would have been 'unavailable'.

To be 'unavailable' now is simply not a status that users are confident to adopt. Self-regulatory regimes, for example the checking for messages, logging onto SNS etc, reflect how there is a mechanism of compliance in terms of the appropriate level of social availability and behaviour.

What is most interesting from a research perspective is the potential ramifications, if there is user misinformation, misuse of information, and how much people want to disclose and feel comfortable about finding out about one another...


Harvey Jones, H. and Soltren, J.H. ‘Facebook: Threats to Privacy’, December 2005 Retrieved February 6th, 2007 www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6.805/student-papers/fall05-papers/facebook.pdf
Retrieved February 6th, 2007