Social networking 2.0 needs to embrace a work/life balance
To keep our private and public lives separate, many of us have at least two email addresses, two IM accounts, two mobile phone numbers and two Facebook accounts. There needs to be a better way to manage it all, says Adam Turner.
We can all split our contacts into two basic groups - family/friends and colleagues - with several sub-sets of each. Unfortunately social networking has grown up around the all or nothing concept of "friends", with few ways to differentiate between your mum, your boss and some guy you met on a drunken night on the town. Making them all your Facebook "friend" means they can probably all see those unfortunate photos of that night on the town.
To keep our private and public lives separate, many of us have at least two email addresses, two IM accounts, two mobile phone numbers and two Facebook accounts. It makes identity management a nightmare and creates complications when work and life overlap.
What we really need are multiple profiles within the one identity, with the ability to adjust which contacts see which profile. Better yet, we need a megaprofile containing all our private and public details, with the ability to categorise our contacts and customise which aspects of our profile they see (just as your work colleagues see a different side of you than your family). I expect Facebook will embark down this path soon and other social network providers will follow.
I think there's a need for three basic categories of contacts; family, friends and work. Each could be divided into grades; close, standard and distant. When you add content to a site, such as photos to Facebook, you can tag which categories on your contact list can access that content.
You can already start to do this on Facebook with a Friends List, but you don't have the granular control to create public and private status posts or sections of your wall, for example.
The only way to maintain privacy is to lock work colleagues out of these areas completely, or else maintain a separate Facebook account for work. The right level of controls would let the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook exist on the same site, which is a massive business opportunity for whichever social networking site can get it right.
While this level of control would be great, trying to maintain it across all your methods of communication would be a nightmare. What we really need is a central repository for maintaining our megaprofile and our preferences for each contact. This way you could introduce extra controls, such as varying your contactability according to your location and the time of day.
I guess what we're talking about is identity management and unified communications. So far implementations have mostly been restricted to the corporate world because it's expensive to do properly, and disastrous to do on the cheap.
Yes, I can hear the privacy alarm bells ringing. Yes, I remember Microsoft's HailStorm, later renamed Microsoft Passport Network, .NET My Services and .NET Passport. Most people know it as a Hotmail account.
As Passport was integrated into Windows XP in 2001, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie was quoted as saying the public would fully accept HailStorm and Microsoft as a trusted repository within five to 10 years.
Passport failed because people trust Mundie and his cronies about as far as they can kick them. You didn't need to be Nostradamus to see that one coming.
Last year Microsoft finally threw its support behind the open source OpenID online authentication service. Interestingly, OpenID was developed Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of LiveJournal - one of the early social networking sites. OpenID has an impressive list of backers including Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, Yahoo! and MySpace.
Don't expect Facebook to jump onboard soon, as it's launched its own Facebook Connect platform to offer authentication for third party sites. Some people speculate that Facebook Connect is trying to become the de facto standard Microsoft's Passport wanted to be.
Don't expect Larry and Sergey to take Facebook Connect lying down. If Google really throws its weight behind OpenID it could take off, especially if Microsoft and Yahoo get onboard. You'd be hard pressed to find a netizen without an account with at least two of The Big Three - okay The Big One plus Microsoft and Yahoo (who were almost MicroHoo! at one point).
Google could use the idea of a social networking megaprofile as a selling point for OpenID, as it's a well established fact that people will happily trade their privacy for convenience - or a chocolate bar.
The Google Phone is the perfect platform for taking OpenID to the next level - offering automatic call and email screening according to your location and the time of day. Privacy advocates will freak, but your average punter suffering from password fatigue, information overload and security concerns will embrace it with open arms if Google puts the right marketing spin on it.
The broad adoption of OpenID and megaprofiles will also drive the personalisation of the internet, another promise of Web 3.0.
The need for private and public identity management is clear. Google has the influence to make it happen, OpenID is the perfect platform and work/life balance is the perfect selling tool.
From there it's only a short step to RFID tags embedded in the base of our skulls. To make life easier, of course.
Other Blog Entries written by Adam Turner:
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