When Everyone’s a Friend, is anything private?

In the last few weeks we have had some profound discussions around friendships (specifically what constitutes a friend) and the issue of privacy/trust on social networking sites. How many ‘actual’ friends can one have in ‘real’ life and yet how is it that we have hundreds online?

I came across this great article in the New York Times (published March 7th, 2009) that addressed this exact issue – and hence the title of my final blog! The article focuses on Facebook in particular, stating that “(in) December, the average number of “friends” per member, worldwide, was 100”. According to a company spokesperson, that number has now reached to 120. I don’t have anywhere near this amount but I know many who have double that. The definition of ‘friendship’ in this case is obviously not how Danah Boyd defined it. In his article ‘Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community into being on social network sites, Boyd concludes that “it seems as though friendship indicates an exceptionally strong relationship with expectations for emotional and practical support”. By contrast, he says that “when people articulate their relations on social network sites, they are not simply projecting their internal model of tie strength. The public nature of these sites requires participants to perform their relationship to others”.

So, if you consider the old and new definition of ‘friends’, when you bring privacy and trust in the mix, it is no wonder how problematic social networking sites are becoming. The NY Times article I mentioned above supports my view that although most people ‘trust’ their friends with information, when ‘friends’ are defined as anyone who accepts an invitation to be a ‘friend’, this ‘trust’ becomes insignificant. If we start to ‘trust’ everyone and anyone, then ‘trust’ begins to mean nothing – it loses its value. Similarly, the article argues that “as the scope of sharing personal information expands from a few friends to many sundry individuals grouped together under the Facebook label of “friends,” disclosure becomes the norm and privacy becomes a quaint anachronism.”

Even more puzzling is that it appears that many people aren’t even aware of how much of their private information is out there and how easily anyone can own it. To add to this, most people don’t know much (if anything) about the privacy options and terms of service most social networking sites provide. Again, in the same NY Times article, they state that “Facebook offers members a plentitude of privacy options……….43 settings that can be tweaked, not including a bunch for limiting information that can be seen by software applications installed by one’s Facebook friends”.


The article goes on to say that “Facebook’s default settings for new accounts protect users in some ways. For instance, the information in one’s profile is restricted to friends only; it is not accessible to friends of friends. But Facebook sets few restrictions by default on what third-party software can see in a network of friends. Members are not likely aware that unless they change the default privacy settings, an application installed by a friend can vacuum up and store many categories of a member’s personal information.”

I found this article very interesting, here is the full article if you want to read it yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/business/08digi.html?_r=1&em

I think we all need to use better judgment when joining these sites – like most will quickly admit, we don’t even read the contract agreements before AGREEING. Parents need to be more vigilant given how many teenagers are on these sites.

On a final note, while not quite related to this blog’s focus, I did come across this great Youtube video which pokes fun at the fight amongst the more popular networking sites to pull you into their ‘world’………It’s titled Social Networking Wars ..………. enjoy!!!!!!!!