Like many of you, I am becoming more and more obsessed with iphone apps and fun sites that interact with my friends, family, colleagues and neighbors. I’m on every social networking site you could imagine, twitter, facebook, myspace, Google BUZZ, linkedIN, Loopt and FourSquare.
Virtually, you could probably figure out where I am at all times. Which means, is my house empty? Am I a target? Could all of my tweets, updates and notifications be aggrigated into one site that informs the world I’m not home?
Pleaserobme.com is a site that is bringing awareness to those naive internet goers who are caught up in the excitement of new applications and are constantly letting the world know, “Hey, I’m not home, Please Rob Me!”
The site was created by three individuals who aren’t really out to get you robbed. Here’s how they describe the problem created by check-ins and the purpose of the site:
“The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the Internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have ‘friends’ who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the Internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.”
There are a few things you can do to protect yourself:
Don’t list your address ANYWHERE on the internet. If you even have your Resume posted somewhere online, make sure you blur out your address or remove it.
Don’t connect your FourSquare or Loopt to your twitter or Facebook status. By keeping these social media tools separate you avoid your exact location being broadcasted to 10x as many people.
Avoid including your phone number. This is also a search that is easy to conduct and find where you are and where you live, leaving your vulnerable.
So are Foursquare, Loopt, Google Buzz and all the others just sites that make us all easier targets? Location-sharing is becoming such a popular trend this year that it doesn’t seem likely that the site will do much to curb the behavior. If there is such a thing as safe location-sharing, however, I hope you practice it.
In our fast pace world it has become harder and harder to meet people through a traditional courtship. And our favorite Web 2.0 sites are making it much easier to show someone you’re interested via their widgets and services. TheFrisky.com blog posted this rundown on ways to flirt online. They say, “Sure, the Web has made many aspects of our lives easier, but it’s also complicated a few things—specifically, how we date, flirt and meet potential love interests.”
Being a twenty-something I still have faith in the traditional ways of meeting people, at a bar, the grocery store, or that mix-up of drinks at Starbucks- He grabbed my triple grande soy latte, and I grabbed his grande americano- you know how it goes. I’m sure it will diminish as my career and priorities shift and I will become more dependent on the untraditional methods of finding a mate. But I find this whole process interesting as my generation has been spearheading this technology revolution.
I love Drew Barrymores line in He’s just not that into you she says, “Now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies- it’s exhausting!” And it couldn’t be more true, you have to check all of these different applications to see if you’ve been “poked” or someone sent you a gift. And the interpretation could kill you. There is no guide book to online flirting, so how are you supposed to interpret a poke? was it friendly or playful?
It is interesting to watch the trends in older generations using dating sites like Match.com increase. Definitely wasn’t somethingn I expected- I have a hard enough time teaching my mom how to turn on her computer, let alone teaching her how to upload a picture and a profile to one of these sites. I would have imagined that this phenomenon would have skipped that generation and hit mine.
It does scare me that younger generations will be more dependent on this way of life- Communicating through Web 2.0 applications more than through human interaction. And does this lead to poor grammar?
Does this form of communication work against our english and grammar teachers, because when you use text messages or twitter, you have to simplify your messages, sometimes reducing the words and removing correct punctuation confusing it’s and its, a simple, but significant differance between the two words just to fit it into the 140 characters allowed?
But then again, does it help to simplify your message. I have found that working to cram my tweets into 140 characters teaches me to be sycnt and percise with my message, like a lead in a newspaper article.
There are pros and cons to both, but what I guess my point is we’re definitely moving quickly to a 2.0 world- especially when our flirting happens online, but what will this do to future generations? Will they become dependent on technology to be the liasion between human interaction? Will children fall into the trance of the online preditors, because they are comfortable online?
How can we as the Web 2.0 crusaiders prevent future generations from using the web and its tools incorrectly? Do we begin to teach classes on online ettiquet and safety?
As the social media landscape expands, more organizations are taking advantage of the online tools available. There are thousands, and they are expanding as we speak. Anything from fundraiser support sites, to picture and video sharing to niche social networks that can expand your reach as an organization. One tool that I find very helpful is go2web20.net. This site provides an overview and ratings of thousands of Web 2.0 sites.
By taking the time to assess the social landscape in which your organization wishes to immerse in, you can identify key opinion leaders, the audience, and important topics in the conversation. Through assessing the conversation happening in different forms of social media you have the ability to pick and choose the right forum to your conversation. You must be picky when finding the right forum. There is no use having a conversation with people who don’t want to listen.
There are a few ways to find out what social media tools would be right for your organization to utilize in creating a presence online:
Research where your organization stands in all forms of mediums look on Facebook for support groups, on Youtube for videos, on twitter for organizations, competitors and supporters.
Listen to the Conversation Now that you’ve found forums with which your organization could fit into the conversation. Listen. See what others are saying about your product or service and assess the tone. If there is a negative tone, begin to strategist on how you can make negatives into a positive.
Narrow the Field Social media takes time. Don’t be too ambitious because if you begin to have a presence in a specific network and then become lazy and cannot keep up with it, you lose listeners and the point of getting involved in the social media sphere was to gain followers. Take a look at the possible tools you can utilize and assess their relativity to your goal. Then narrow the field.
Participate the hardest thing organizations will find is keeping up with all the forms of social media that are at its fingertips. Just because you are a part of Facebook or twitter doesn’t mean you’re actively participating in it. Make the effort, comment on blogs and message boards, tweet and reply to tweets participate in the social media and show a new audience that you’re doing everything in your means to make them a believer in your product or service.
This is a response to an old post, but I found it extremely interesting so I apologize this is not timely.
In response to a commentary Regina Lynn wrote about Ohio teachers being asked to stay away from social networks, I believe they are being well advised to stay away from the mainstream social networks such as Facebook and Myspace . But as Lynn points out, the internet generation is graduation into the workforce. It is unfair to ask these new teachers to give up their communication and ties to college and maybe even their only communication to friends abroad.
I believe there is a healthy medium for which a teacher, who walks such a thin line when it comes to relationships with students. Being careful comes with the territory and these new and exsisting teachers need to understand that they are walking on thin ice when it comes to teacher-student relationships. If a teacher has either one of these accounts, which he or she knows their students also have accounts, their profiles need to be extremely private and they need to take caution in posting inappropriate pictures and content to their web pages.
When it comes to sites such as Match.com I believe a teacher has every right to be a part of the site as long as they are in good taste, while knowing many have a different definition of “good taste”. The internet is an online venue opened up for the entire world. You NEVER know who is going to read your blog, profile, or news article which is posted on such a widely available venue.
My suggestion is that teachers take precaution. If you post something inappropriate either your student will call you out on it, or your employer… and I’m guessing neither one is the more preferable. You never know when a student may call wolf and you’re stuck knee deep in legal battles just because you couldn’t resist to friend a student on facebook.
Find other forms of communication and up the privacy on all your accounts. You should anyways… there are a lot of creepers out there….
Photo is courtesy of Old Shoe woman from Flickr.com
“The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the Internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have ‘friends’ who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the Internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.”
But as Lynn points out, the internet generation is graduation into the workforce. It is unfair to ask these new teachers to give up their communication and ties to college and maybe even their only communication to friends abroad.
Loading ...