The Good:
The other day I put up a blog post about geolocation sites. I microblogged the information out to Facebook and my other social networking sites. I wanted to know what the community thought about the new Facebook Places. One of the responses I received included:
Frankly, there are many good reasons why one should NOT provide geolocation data to third party feeds and archives on a regular basis. The data can be aggregated and correlated with other information with undesirable results. This is not to… say that I do not announce public events; but moment to moment movements are a different species altogether.
I made note of this class of concerns in a blog entry the other year entitled “Micro-blogging and Personal Self-Surveillance” at https://www.rlgsc.com/blog/ruminations/micro-blogging-and-personal-information.html
This was signed by Robert Gezelter, a Facebook friend I met at a seminar I gave nearly a year ago on social media. After that post, I got a note from an old client, Brad Stern who said:
Hi Hil! Yet another reason I love you! I read your FB posting about the whole geolocation thing and noticed that one of the responses came from Robert Gezelter. I recognized the name right away as someone w/ whom I went to elementary school in Woodside, Queens. He was actually one of my best friends. I moved to Stony Brook in 1967 and we traded letters for a short while and that was it. Well, I sent him a message via FB and, —- years later we re-connected! He not only remembered me, but he also remembered that I had moved to Stony Brook! We’re going to get together for coffee. All because of you and your post!
That made me feel good to help people connect via social networking. I’ve been connecting people my whole life and now it gives me another outlet to use.
The Bad:
The other day, I found out that a client and friend, Mike Sullivan, passed away from a heart attack. He was only 60. I also learned that Mrs. Muirhead, a neighbor down the block from where I grew up, also passed. I’m friendly with her children on Facebook and it was very upsetting to hear this bad news on Facebook.
The Ugly:
Right after that, a woman called my home and asked my son for my cell phone number. She told him it was a dire emergency. He thought that something happened to someone so he gave it to her. My cell phone rang moments later with a blocked caller ID. I picked it up. (You never know it could be a client!)
“You better take that post down on Facebook,” she screamed into the phone. I was shocked. I didn’t know what hit me. What post? What are you talking about? In any event, she was referring to a blog post that I put up and took down about someone I knew 30 years ago.
The woman was so upset and really didn’t even know the facts. But I didn’t want to upset her so I took it down. I also was a little afraid that a stranger could call my home and get my cell phone number. I was afraid for my kids and I was afraid for myself.
Facebook and all the other social networking sites have good, bad and ugly… Tell me your FB story…
