Social Networking

"Disregard the hype and the haters," PC Mag's longtime columnist John C.

"Your readers know more than you."

Dan Gillmor coined this as the now-familiar journalistic koan: the reporter aims to inform but always finds that some readers have more information about the story they're reporting. This was always the case, he explained, but it took on a new urgency in the Internet era, as readers found outlets to respond, and correct, reporters publicly.

I wanted to take a few moments and try to understand the hysteria at Facebook's changes, what it means, and what users should really be concerned with. I am not a Facebook apologist. I use Facebook, I use Twitter, and even get lulled into using emerging sites like Twine.

Spam is the name we give to unsolicited emails from unknown people. We shouldn't call spam what our friends send to us, but we have the same problem, that of having to wade through too many unimportant messages in a limited amount of time.

The Open Community Enablement Model (oCEM) is a definition of how a service provider works with its client community to enable them to do their jobs. It is similar to the CRM/CEM paradigms, but the "C" does not stand for "Customer"; it does not assume a customer/vendor relationship where the end goal is customer retention / expansion (i.e., more sales).

There's a limited market for the Facebook privacy beat, since most problems can be solved by young Zuckerberg flicking a particular switch. After all, one key aspect of a well-designed technical architecture (and Facebook has demonstrated that it is one) is the ability to reconfigure it without much difficulty. And sometimes it's as simple as cleaning up the user interface.

A bunch of merry pranksters have had some fun with the phrase anti-social networking over the last few years. ("You can use Nemester to: Find out the enemies of your enemies and conspire with them Denounce your enemies... Make new enemies... Help your enemies meet their demise..."; Introvertster is an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing you online.")