The Facebook – Scoble – Plaxo controversy from this morning prompted members of the Twitter Community to tweet about it as it unfolded, and murmurs continued after Robert Scoble’s facebook account was reactivated. Jeremiah Owyang blogged about his Q&A discussion with Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr and John McCrea regarding Plaxo’s technology and its use to scrape data.
The discussion continued on Twitter, with @joywang asking “By you sending me an email (and me responding) we’re in a social contract. Can I use the content of an email without your knowledge?” I tweeted back with some questions, and @jasonalba made the point that consent to share information occurred when one accepted another’s friend request.
Jeremiah Oywang raises a great question, one worth more than 140 characters. People use the content of emails without others’ knowledge when forwarding it on to friends: John Fitzgerald Page found this out when his email exchange ended up on Gawker and other blogs. Should they? That’s a different, more interesting question. Jeremiah’s opinion, in part, is:
“There’s a unsaid social contract that if you become my friend, I expect you to use my information that I share with you justly, and most of all, be considerate. On the other hand, what’s happening is just the taste of what’s to come, this is the year where the social graph will become portable, whether containers like Facebook or Plaxo allow it, or other tools come around to scrape it.”
I would expect people with apprehensions about the online availability of their personal information and want to maintain control of it would be less likely to post it online. Their friend networks or social graphs will likely be populated by those they met offline before establishing an online connection. Contrast that with those who actively seek to make connections online first, which may then translate into in person connections. Would the latter group be more likely to share their information freely? At what point does the social media embracer decide that while he enjoys connecting with others online, he does not want to share personal contact information online?
Taking responsibility for your online information entails proactively monitoring your online profile and making easily accessible already public information. Perhaps this is idealistic of me, but I hope that my respect of others’ information translates into their respect of mine. Apply the Golden Rule to others’ information available online.
