Miss New Jersey vs. Facebook vs. Common Sense
Facebook has broken demographic barriers and is now being used by high schoolers, college kids, and lots of adults trying desperately to catch up with the social networking trend.
As more folks engage in self-publishing/ online networking, our expectations for security and privacy seem to be increasing. People continue to be surprised when their private information turns up in the media, as part of an investigative story or just the morning news.
This morning, I overheard Miss New Jersey talking about how the scandalous photos she'd uploaded to Facebook were "private," and in a "secure area." (see below) Fact is, once you give someone access to your data, it isn't private anymore...
And that made me think of newspapers and other news sites that require registration. The process takes less than a minute, typically, and only has to be done once. And hell, you don't even have to enter true information. I were to register as George Michael, male, 40 years old, London, rather than Amy Webb, female, 32 years old, Baltimore, would that somehow restrict my access to the site? Of course not.
People outright object to registration systems, and the most common reason I'm given is this: privacy. People don't want their "private" information potentially shared with anyone else.
I'm starting to think that one of the most significant, if not overlooked, challenges of our industry is that we need to change the minds of our consumers. They'll give up everything to Facebook, and not even fake info to the New York Times...
