::fibreculture:: Facebook group

[Professor Julian Knowles]

Facebook has taken off in the last couple of months within my own 
social and professional networks - it's been very interesting to 
observe the rapid uptake and to observe timing of the wave sweeping 
through one's professional and personal worlds.

The curious thing from my perspective is the blurring of the personal 
and professional networks. As a user of facebook, you are 'friended' by 
as many professional contacts as actual friends (in a social sense). If 
you are someone who works in a creative area, then frequently your 
private interests overlay quite heavily with your profession, so this 
blending is fairly effortless - if you listen incessantly to 70s punk 
rock, then chances are your professional contacts already know that, so 
there won't be too many surprises about your recreational habits if 
they become visible in a social network. With a mixed set of contacts, 
however, there are questions which arise around how to maintain 
distinctions between professional and personal relationships, not so 
much around actual behaviours, as around the information and opinions 
which are shared and whether distinctions can be made as to who sees 
what information. Facebook allows the user to specify that some friends 
will only see a 'limited profile' so i guess they are trying to address 
that from an interface perspective.

This issue arises if you use your real identity/name as an online 
profile. Facebook encourages this while others are neutral to it. Some 
people cope with the privacy issues by assuming a pseudonym online and 
only revealing their identity to friends.

Fortunately it seems that Facebook is immune to google bots, which 
allows for basic boundaries to be preserved around communication to a 
closed group. As social networks proliferate, i personally find the 
presence of google to be a little oppressive. Last.fm, for example, is 
trawled by google. I've been thinking about how to deal with these 
privacy isues, given that i prefer to be myself online and not assume a 
pseudonym. Not sure if anyone else is tossing around the same issues 
but it seems to me the issue of google and privacy is hotting up in 
respect of social networks.


Cheers

Julian




_________________________
Professor Julian Knowles
Portfolio Director
Music and Sound, Communication Design/Visual Arts, Dance
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/

On 09/08/2007, at 12:44 PM, Anna Poletti wrote:

>
> yes, Tom I am with you. Perhaps you could add the 'My Questions'
> application to your facebook page and and ask your friends?
> (tongue in cheek)
>
> I was somehow roped into it and have made sense of my friend network as
> a loose affiliation more akin to colleagues and (professional) 
> networks.
> It seems I get friended by people who like to keep track of me, who I
> have worked / volunteered with on different projects, and so I have
> resolved that facebook is another means of maintaining
> quasi-professional contacts.
> (And facebook seems perfect for this in the kinds of industries and
> communities where 'professional' can sometimes be a dirty word, and
> where our interactions often include both various shades of sociality.)
>
>
> ::posted on ::fibreculture:: mailinglist for australasian
> ::critical internet theory, culture and research
> :: info: http://fibreculture.org/mailman/listinfo/list_fibreculture.org
> :: FIbreculture website: http://www.fibreculture.org
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