image: lamebook.com
Is this normal? The above Facebook conversation deomonstrates a point Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) spoke about at the Crunchies Awards this past Friday. According to him, it’s becoming more and more normal for users of social media to live their Internet lives more publicly. In other words, more ‘personal’ information is becoming ‘public’ through the use of social media platforms like Twitter, Blogs and Facebook. Here’s what Zuckerberg had to say:
‘When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’
‘And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.’
Facebook recently has loosened its privacy settings, which again illustrates our current trend towards the free sharing of individual information (even personal information) online. That’s definitely the direction we are moving in… but SHOULD we be sharing more of our private and personal information online for everyone to see? This week’s poll is more open ended, so please write your responses in the comments section below!
I think it’s important to say that the two are 19 and seem a LITTLE immature! they don’t represent everyone!
I think people are comfortable discussing their personal lives online up to a point. Considering the Stasi-like levels our phone and email traffic is monitored, certain discussions would never take place so publicly. For example, drugs or civil disobedience.