In the same week as our latest Girl Geek Dinner it seems appropriate to post a little, and lament a lot, about the experience of networking. As frequent readers of this blog know I’m an academic at heart, used to the conference rounds and being able to put yourself ‘out there’, engage with some fabulously bright and sharp people and to really enjoy meeting and greeting both in the connected Web 2.0 sense as well as the ‘disconnected’ with ‘real’ people face-to-face. And this has got me thinking, with such a positive spin on social networking are there any negative factors?…
One negative impact that immediately springs to mind is the recent strange and ‘stalker-like’ incidence that has taken place. This has now been cleared up, when they finally got the ‘please leave alone’ message, and lets just say that we are not ‘Facebook friends’ anymore. Other more run of the mill negative impacts of networking has been the extortionate amount of spam that is finding its way to me daily. I now have three email domains purely for the spamalots *yawn*.
But wait! It is not just email, now my Facebook newsfeed is a homage to all that is ‘warewolf’, ‘jackpotjoy’ and other details that are non-friend/network related. I remember when my newsfeed was about the friends, events and invitations that I was interested in.
And so, it has occurred to me that once your details are ‘out there’ and are made discoverable, suddenly you appear legitimately ‘up for grabs’ to advertisers and network voyeurs alike. On the one hand I want to remain ‘open’ to others, but if my own general awareness is going to be continually barraged by spams, ‘weirdo’s’ and cold calling does this make for an anti-social network? Am I ‘anti-social’ by not wanting to take part in such connections?
Likely your own (like mine) social networking profile(s), have become a conduit for spam, with bogus invitations, events, and friend requests each time you log in, suddenly these become less about the networking and more about the net not-working as it conspires against you. My most recent gripe is with the incidental treasure that is Twitter; where I’m being made someone’s, or rather ‘somespam’s’ ‘friend’ on a regular basis.
So in one way we are continually being ‘indexed’ and profiled when we are online. Which is fine and I am all for public displays and shares of information, this is after all what Web 2.0 ethos is all about! However, what has made me become a little ‘anti-social’ and come over all network coy is the unsolicited social prompts that appear as commands and mount up out of control.
Whether this is a situation that has become the norm of Web 2.0, or can be safe-guarded in the future might be part of another set of prompts for social networking…
Or just a better spam guard…
About Dr Mariann Hardey
I hold the position of Lecturer in Social Media Marketing at Durham Business School. I also spend too much time enjoying social technologies, media+ stuff. That'll make me a Geek then. And a gal.
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