Is Geosocial Networking
Social Media Marketing’s Newest Darling and Cash Cow?
Or Is Big Brother* Now Watching Your Every Move?
Personal Privacy Alert: Parents of teenagers and children using Smart Phones to update their Facebook profiles may want to immediately ‘opt out’ their children. See Video Instructions Below This Article.
List of Geosocial Services from Wikipedia Geosocial Networking
- Facebook Places
- Brightkite
- Fire Eagle
- Foursquare
- Gbanga
- Google Latitude
- Gowalla
- Hotlist
- Scvngr
- Socialight
Opinions vary widely regarding the latest Location-Based Geosocial Media launch (8- 18-10)
One thing is certain: Facebook’s ongoing quest to compete in and totally dominate
Social Media Marketing is continuing with this this new offering.
So what is the Status of Personal Privacy for Social Media users?
Facebook Places is a geosocial networking location-based service poised to kick Foursquare to the curb in this latest round of Race for the Social Media Marketing Money. IMO, any issue here is not that geosocial location-based networking services exist; they serve a valid purpose.
The real Personal Privacy issue is: All Facebook users were automatically ‘Opted-in’ to full internet sharing on Facebook Places – without really knowing or understanding the implications. And without being given an easy method to ‘unsubscribe’ to the service. It is obvious from Facebook’s choice of implementation for the Facebook Places service – that Facebook does not really want users to ‘opt-out’.
Be An Educated Social Media Consumer: Know How to Opt-Out of Facebook Places, if that is your choice. Also, Facebook Places FAQs Page.
In the past few months, Facebook has sought to compete with Twitter by automatically opting-in all users in their Instant Personalization App ( “Lets you see relevant information about your friends the moment you arrive on select partner websites”) that has the unfortunate side-effect of also freely making available all user Status Updates for Google Search on the internet. To avoid having all your Facebook Status Updates shared throughout the internet, you have to Opt Out** of this Facebook feature. ( ‘Count Me Out!’ as a marketing gimmick?)
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian [pessimistic view] novel by the English writer George Orwell, published in 1949. The story, which focuses on the life of Winston Smith, was Orwell’s vision of a totalitarian state which has absolute control over every action and thought of its people through propaganda, secrecy, constant surveillance, and harsh punishment. In some editions it is retitled 1984.
** From Newsweek Article: Facebook: Friend, Foe, or Frenemy?
“But the real problem isn’t the complexity of Facebook’s privacy controls. The problem is the privacy policy itself. Of course Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) knows this. He’s many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. The real point of his essay, in fact, was that Facebook has no intention of rolling back the stuff that people are really upset about.
The company did revise its privacy policy this week, and some privacy experts were appeased, while others said Facebook still has more work to do. For one thing, if you want to keep Facebook from sharing your info with Facebook apps and connected Web sites, you have to opt out — meaning, the default setting is you’re sharing. From my perspective a better policy would just to have everything set to private, by default.
But at this point the details of the policy aren’t even the real issue. The real issue is one of perception, which is that sure, Facebook made some changes, but only because they had no choice. The perception is that Facebook got caught doing something wrong, and sheepishly backed down. That is the narrative that will be attached to this latest episode, and it’s not a good one for Facebook.”