TechWag

: Image via CrunchBase

Facebook, FriendFeed, Linkedin are great ways of getting to know people. The problem comes in when people start doing odd things or sending odd notes to your mailbox or DM on these systems. There has been a rash of people deleting accounts lately on Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed lately either through the distraction that these systems have, or being terminally offended by something that someone posted. The naked pictures of kittens playing with nipple rings aside, the time of the public and private profile has arrived and this mostly has to do with self-protection and a sense of being more intimate with a smaller number of users who really do matter to you.

The telling point in any story is what triggers the event that causes someone to modify his or her behavior. The key trigger for me was a supervisor walking into the office waving their iPod and asking what was going on with my Facebook account, why were there so many postings. The issue at heart was that I was mucking about with a program – and literally had everything from FriendFeed going into Facebook. This caused a problem because it looked like I spent all day social networking and not doing much of anything else. This was a programmatic issue; I was mucking about in code with a program, and was literally dumping everything from all the people (over 500) on FriendFeed. This was beyond that supervisors belief system because they honestly thought that there had to be a direct action to get anything into Facebook.

I have also been seeing a sharp increase in just simple weirdness coming in from other sites, and people with demands, things they want now when I do not even know them. Which is disturbing to say the least, my time is in short supply at times, and having people demand anything from me becomes problematic very quickly.

Hence the private profile, I can program to my heart’s content without upsetting anyone along the way, and keeping a supervisor out of my office waving their iPod at me as if I was doing something offensive. Moreover, this might be the one thing that people need to do to adopt some form of privacy on social networking sites. One profile for everyone and their brother, and one profile that is more intimate to be used amongst a smaller circle of friends.

The immediate benefits are if you boss, HR, or employment group wants to have access to your Facebook account you can give them the public profile. The one with all the ordinary people or one that is rarely updated as your base, the face you show to the world. Ensure that your public profile puts your best foot forward and is professional, enjoyable, and reflects well upon you. Your private profile, the one with your smaller circle of friends can be just that, more private and satisfies your needs for conversation where no one will mind what you are up to online.