Bloggers and Social Networking seeking more privacy?
It seems there are mutterings in cyberspace about users’ desire for more privacy in their blogging and social networking activities. Though this seems to fly in the face of the whole blogging and SN concept its really just a maturing of the scene.
Makers of Vox, Six Apart are promoting their Private blogging and social networking capabilities, but they’re not the only ones.
MySpace has been offering private profiles to its users since the summer, and competitor Facebook is doing something similar.
But the whole private/public debate is much more complex in reality. My own company Izimi has rather more advanced features due for release in the new year, including profiles and user groups that can be listed or unlisted, private or public, and open or closed.
I’ll need to elaborate a little to explain the finer points:Its no use just saying ‘my profile is private’ or ‘its public’ unless you have a bit more control. After all, SN is about connecting not blocking out. There will always be the extremes: one person wanting to broadcast totally publically to all, and the other person keeping a tight lid on what they say and whom has access. Whats more important in any SN offering is that the CHOICE is there to do these and any graduation in between.
Here’s what this means to Izimi:
- Users can be Listed or Unlisted - controls whether my profile appears in search results or not- A User can have multiple User Profiles - allows me to present different public faces to different circles of people, and to complete more or less detail for the different groups.
- Groups: can be Public or private - public allows anyone to ‘join’ my group, private requires a handshake (either an invite from the Owner and acceptance from the joinee, or a request to join from the joinee and acceptance from the Owner) which gives the Group Owner a chance to view the joinees profile to decide whether to approve.
- Groups: can be Visible or Invisible - allows me to determine if Groups I own are seen by casual viewers or not. Making a Group invisible renders it unfound in any search, and when a user is viewing my profile the Group is hidden. This allows me ultimate privacy for any groups I may not wish my other conacts to see (maybe something I’m ambarassed about).
- Groups: can be free or paid - hidden in version 1, but to be anabled later to allow users to charge for memberships of their groups. This will go hand in hand with allowing users to charge for their premium content.
So privacy it seems is on everyone’s horizon, no surprise there, its just maturing of the offerings.