Privacy and Social Media

It's no secret that I love social media. I am very active on many platforms, including Facebook, Youtube and now LinkedIn. Although I am not afraid of sharing parts of my life on these platforms with other people, I am also very aware of the fact that all the content that I share, and my behavioural data, is used for commercial purposes by those platforms and by anyone who uses "listening" tools to gather insights. However, are those 600 Million users on Facebook as aware?

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with using insights gathered through advanced listening tools, statistical data or behavioural targeting to find hot leads, but it's the transparency of these activities to people which to me is very important. Only when people know that this is happening can they make conscious decisions about what to share on the web and what not to share. In most cases, people do not read the fine print.

I think there should be a better job done of creating awareness about these policies without scaring people. This belief implies brands have to be more open about what happens with this data, and provide the tools and information to people to both see how their data is being used and give them control over its use.

Trust is a key element when building relationships. A trustworthy brand cannot be built if they are not upfront about how they will use their customer's content and data. 

In addition, there is an even darker side to social media, which can be very scary. For example, people updating statuses, which state where they are allow people (robbers) to know where they are and if they are not home.

I don’t think there is any reason to be paranoid though. I know I am not. It is all about being conscious of our privacy and about what we allow other to see, track and use. And as professionals in the online world, they need to be careful and respect privacy of people as it ultimately affects ourselves, our children and all our loved ones.