Discussion on:

Antisocial media: Is this social media stuff really the future?

I surely hope not. I'd rather go with "Kodachrome."

You nibbled around this point, but I see most social media as a huge time and energy drain that distracts attention from more effective marketing and sales efforts. I choose my media wisely (LinkedIn, not Facebook) and take a deep breath before devoting a lot of time and effort to its maintenance.

All those people who have done or said something stupid (and believe me that is most of us) will rue the day that they put it on their tweets or myspace page to be thrown in their face during job interviews and other critical times of their lives.

"Facebook is yet another free online disservice that positions itself between people and cheapens you."

Shut your facebook.

Social Media, Yes good avenue to market products, sell yourself but I think the security rating of information released should be properly assessed.

We've only just begun with social media and networks. Remember Lycos, Webcrawler, AltaVista and other search sites before Google's market triumph through simplicity in an end user interface? There is a lot yet to go with social media, networks and content before we get to even just a stable, much less mature, working human interactive social environment in the virtual world.

Socializing and networking is an intense personal thing in "reality". It therefore will be the same in "virtuality". Just like a bad printer who screws up your business cards, bad software in social media sites magnifies the price one pays for poor software quality in hacks, etc. The pain will now be personal in nature, which is the worse kind.

The software industry has never taken quality seriously, but social media may in fact, finally force a change in priorities when it comes to software, testing and operational quality in market offerings.

One good sign of the immaturity of social media has been aptly pointed out in some excellent posts about the personal time considered by some as wasted in social media postings, etc. Some prescient posters are already asking the right questions and analyzing the results for this phenomenon called social media in terms of a return on their precious time investment. What is the ROI for social media? How do you measure it? No one knows yet even how to measure it, much less figure out an investment strategy. Even in the real personal networking world, there is significant variance between individuals as to the value of networking and socializing. Remember the saying "It's not what you know but who you know that's important."?

I believe that the topic of social media ROI will boil down to individual tastes and personality, which could also be different for an individual between the real and the virtual worlds. The ROI and balance between "reality" and "virtuality" may also vary during an individual's lifetime and life objectives, just as one excellent and revealing post pointed already out that LinkedIn has more value than Facebook for the poster. There may even be a market for lifestyle interest transitions between stages in your personal social media revolution. Social lifestyle stage migration products anyone?

Our youth and those who don't treasure their privacy have already jumped head first into some "more risque" websites of networking (of course that's just my opinion). These folks remind me of the early experimenters of the social sexual revolution of the 50's and the 60's. They are already creating a digital evolutionary fingerprint of their lives and exposing the fundamental building blocks of their personalities. This may turn out to be a mistake in the future for some, or it could become an opportunity. Only time will tell.

Oh, and don't forget that Tech Republic is in its own way a social media community, albeit very specialized and "exclusive". It may be that this is a specialized tech community, but it is definitely a social media nevertheless. For those who call others names and insult in this social media you're not doing anything different than playing out your life in Flikr, FaceBook, LinkedIn or MySpace!

I am beginning to foresee a higher level of identity theft. If what we are, and what we do is digitized - if who we are becomes a digital footprint, then that footprint needs to be managed with the same kind of caution as the contents of our wallets.

I totally agree with you. Every technological advance in history has been fraught with danger which eventually comes out and must be handled.

There will have to be new rules on the ethical and legal usage and verification of social content. Banks and other firms are now using social content to help influence major financial decisions about you such as issuance of credit and employment acceptance. Pretty soon I expect that admittance to certain organizations, restaurants, clubs and even retail establishments may be subject to a "social footprint" search and analysis. Social media and content participation discrimination may become even more prevalent than racial discrimination!

As to the subject of identity theft, your identity IMHO is essentially just a snapshot of certain key elements of your life for specific identification purposes, mostly financial in nature. I see something worse, call it a "lifestyle theft" where your good name hijacked for use by someone else and maybe your social postings are altered to change others perceptions of what you stand for. Case in point? The hijacking of passports in the Du Bai murders. The individuals who used the "hijacked" passports were questioned by authorities and they had detailed knowledge of the forged passport identities, including some of their social content.

IBM and other traditionally heavy handed employers recently asked all their employees to "volunteer" their DNA for a major genome research project. What was noticeably absent was a guarantee that the donated genome data would be anonymous and secure from prying eyes. Employees got a thanks from the firm for their volunteering and some cute historical data as to where they may be from, but in exchange now somebody has their DNA which can be used for health, employment and who knows what other types of discrimination.

Digital footprints are not your passport, bank account or identity. It is not your home address or your phone number

Digital footprints are the active and passive content you leave in the web. Active from you and your friends - blogs, twits, photo etc and passive is geo-tags and other automatic data you don't enter.

Yes, Digital footprint needs management and has value and is the next battle ground of the web as everyone wants to own your digital data.

have a look at a free on line book http://www.mydigitalfootprint.com

Imagine a job where one cleans up and organizes Social sites. PR if you will. They go in and make sure people are using these sites to the fullest and help set up alias sites for the CEO that just has to put the pictures up of his "vacation" with the secretary. Of course this service will be expensive, but it's not for the rank and file. This will be for the elite of society. Those with more money than they know what to do with. Those with an image to protect. Those that will pay, and pay dearly to keep secrets tucked neatly away. Muwahahaha.

It is the apex of self-involved, ego massage, stupidity that has been invented so far.