A week ago when I penned My Network, My Way, there was one aspect of the equation I completely overlooked. While the topic sparked a lively conversation across the blogsphere, like me many missed a very vital point:Privacy.
Sonia Arrison, Director, Center for Technology Studies, Pacific Research Institute, picks up where I left off and it is better if we let her use her words, for I could not say it better.
bq. ….are a networker’s dream but a privacy-hawk’s nightmare. These sites are aggregating information, provided by people themselves, that could prove almost as useful as a Total Information Awareness (TIA) program to government snoops. I joined Friendster, Ryze, Linked-in, Tribe.Net, Yafro, Plaxo and Spoke and stand amazed at the amount of data they hold. If social networking sites continue with the success they’ve had over the last year, Scott McNealy’s quip “you have zero privacy anyway, so get over it,” will be as true as the maxim that knowledge is power.
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