ResearchGoddess

I’ve been reading a lot of posts lately from people who are concerned about the privacy of some of our new social technologies, in particular the geotagging services such as Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, Rally Up, and Brightkite. For example:

• On Geek.com, Christian Zibreg says of Twitter’s new geotagging feature, “There’s no doubt geotagging is a privacy advocates’ nightmare, especially for users who have their Twitter timeline set public.”
• On VentureBlog, a commenter wrote, “Many of my young women friends are not comfortable with LBS [location-based services] because of stalkers: it has already happened to some of them, and others are just wary. After all, think of what happened to Kathy Sierra just from blogging.”
• On ZDNet, Jennifer Leggio stated, “Any time you take to a social network you give up some of your privacy. This is especially true when using a social network that’s sole purpose is to tell your friends where you are at any given time.”
• The site PleaseRobMe.com‘s mission statement includes this statement: “The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home.”

While I certainly share the same concerns over privacy of one’s whereabouts, I think there is another topic here that hasn’t really been addressed much, and that is the topic of taking personal responsibility for one’s actions…

There are good arguments for privacy surrounding location-based services, however I think it’s important to remember that every single one of these tools is opt-in. You don’t have to use them. In addition to that, once you register for an account you have the option NOT to send updates to Twitter, Facebook, or any other social channels, and you always have the option not to connect to other people and let them know what you’re doing.

People are so quick to point fingers at someone or something else when things don’t go right that they quite often forget that they themselves left the door wide open for misfortune to occur. I don’t think this is limited to geotagging, either. I see people who get upset over things that are posted to their Facebook wall as well. A little common sense goes a long way when establishing what you will and won’t allow to be posted to your Facebook wall – by others as well as by yourself. It’s pretty silly, in my opinion, to blame the creator of the site or service for invasion of privacy when you’ve been given the tools with which to make your profile or communication private. Instead of blindly using a service and not checking out its privacy customizations, take a moment to look at what you’re getting yourself into. Take responsibility for your own actions.

We need to educate people on responsible networking and connecting. These apps are much more personal than LinkedIn and therefore we should not just be accepting connection requests because someone follows us on Twitter. There are consequences to connecting with people and sharing your location. I personally would consider myself to be an over-sharer. (though I haven’t unlocked that badge on Foursquare just yet!) I admittedly check in a lot and readily share my locations with my network. However, I’ll also accept full responsibility for any consequences of my over-sharing. Nothing bad has happened to me yet. (knock on wood)

I think in the end it is really important to keep in mind that our hands are not being forced when it comes to any of these geotagging tools. We always have the option not to connect, not to share, and not to use.

How do you hold yourself personally responsible when you use location-based services? What are your personal policies on privacy when it comes to social media?

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight: Jennifer Leggio
Role: Social Business Blogger
Company: ZDNet
Who paid it forward: Jeremiah Owyang

Side-note: Jennifer is the only person who was both asked to provide a recommendation and recommended by someone else for the project. This speaks highly to the impression she is making in the social media world.

Jennifer is a social business blogger with ZDNet. She writes about how companies use social media and enterprise 2.0 technologies. She has an affinity for privacy, reputation, and security issues as it pertains to social media. Jennifer has been a communications professional for more than 15 years and has led or supported interactive social networking efforts for industry conferences including SOURCE Boston, RSA Conference and Black Hat USA, and founded the Security Twits, a community for network security professionals. She also co-hosts the Quick’n’Dirty Social Media Podcast with Aaron Strout and is a founding member of Technically Women, a communal blog project.

How Jennifer got into blogging: Jennifer has always been a writer and is really interested in technology. She was a journalist for two different newspapers before she moved into a public relations role about ten years ago. She moved to the San Francisco area and started working for a boutique PR firm specializing in security clients. On the side, she used to co-own an underground Bay area ‘metal scene’ website for music fans where she had a community management role. After the website was sold, she did straight PR for awhile and currently works in the network security industry in a strategic communications role. Seeing a need to connect her fellow security industry colleagues a few years ago, she established a “Security Twits” list, and through doing this she got to know a lot of people. What they ended up with were hundreds of people on the list and more connections via Twitter being made amongst security industry professionals. ZDNet reached out to her to write because of her efforts with this, so she sort of ‘accidentally’ stumbled into blogging due to her curiosity.

What Jennifer hopes for social media in the future: What Jennifer would like to see is for social media to become more integrated. She says that she would like to see it stop getting talked about as this ‘shiny new thing’ that people have to get good at for business. She says, “Social media doesn’t have to be its own department – it should be a cross-functional collaborative effort. It should be a value-add offered to clients without charging for it. There are a lot of specialties – if you position yourself as a ‘specialist’ you’re doing a disservice if you’re only offering one slice of the pie. Social media is one slice, and not the whole pie.”

A few thoughts from Jennifer on being an influencer: There are lots of posts on how to be an influencer, get more followers, network better, and so forth. Jennifer asks, “Who are the people you see doing the best work at this?” She says that it’s the people who have their heads down doing the work and not making spectacles of themselves. Jennifer says, “Do your job and share your knowledge; it doesn’t matter if you help ten people or 10,000 people. Know that the people who are reading you read because they want to, not because they have to.”

Connect with Jennifer on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog (and ZDNet blog)

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What Jennifer had to say about Ken: “Ken is a stellar blogger, though he still flies slightly under the radar and he shouldn’t. He is a master in the practical application of social media and is also a growing thought leader, as evidenced by his blog posts and tweets. He’s definitely a rising star.”

Ken works at Ernst & Young and  heads up social media practice  as their Director of Social Media. They provide advisory services to brands globally in a variety of areas. He helps his clients better understand the digital space and use web analytics to better strategize. He was originally approached by Ernst & Young recruiters about this position via LinkedIn.

Ken attended college at Central Michigan University where he studied Psychology. He ended up spending more time in the computer lab where he taught himself programming and started doing this as a freelancer. This ‘sidetrack’ turned into twelve years of working with agencies doing ditigal marketing and advertising. Ultimately, Ken began running digital operations and analytics projects and found himself moving away from the nuts and bolts of the tech side. Of his formal education, he says that his time studying psychology has helped him be a good communicator. It helps him with management – when you’re working with many different people all day long you need to understand different personalities.

Why Ken believes Jennifer recommended him: Jennifer is a very “pay it forward” kind of person. Ken does alot of this through sharing posts and links – he reaches out to people to learn about others and find ways he can help out. He tries to positively promote data and analytics professionals and help people understand and champion the analytics of social media. Not a lot of people spend time in this area, and Ken believes that’s what caught Jennifer’s eye.

What Ken loves about social media: Ken got involved in social media primarily to focus on brands and clients with regards to strategy and analytics. He hopes to help blaze some new trails with thought leadership for analytics, namely how to standardize and formalize it, and how to use this data to make good business decisions. Ken also believes in developing the use of social media for internal purposes. While working with a consumer healthcare company at one point, he helped them develop an internal social network for the company’s employees. This particular company primarily had an older demographic of employees who were not very comfortable with the tools, but had a lot of knowledge and wisdom to share. They wanted to create a culture of innovation, and Ken worked with the company’s leadership to help them understand the audience. Ultimately, he assisted them with selecting the appropriate technology to reach the audience, actively engage them, and develop community.

Where Ken sees social media going in the future: Ken says that we’re past the “what is social media” question now, and over the next year, companies big and small will start getting serious about this in ways that make sense to them. Companies will begin exploring the right social media ‘prescription’ for them based on industry, culture, customer base, and so forth. The ‘Why’ and the ‘What’ will be replaced with the ‘How’, best practices will be brought forth, and we will see niche uses evolve.

Connect with Ken on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog