Facebook data. I'm conflicted.
I mean, I've been blogging for about 5 years, and I know that's probably left a trail of TMI strewn across the interwebz. (Cancer does that to you.)
Lots of my data, I realize, is online, and for better or worse, a lot of it is pretty public.
Google me. Read the blog archives. Look me up on LinkedIn. Find my writings on RWW. Follow me on Twitter. There I am. Whatever. Wheeeeee.
But for some reason, I feel differently about Facebook. I'd like some privacy there.
I don't say that naively. (Well, maybe I do.) I mean, I realize anything I say or do or click or share there is in a public forum, even if it's one that purports to let you restrict your broadcast to a select network.
It's not like there's anything particularly damning in my Facebook profile -- I share mostly geeky Star Wars links and wry comments about such-and-such. But I dunno -- I feel as though the social space that I have constructed for myself on FB shouldn't necessarily be wide open for anyone to access at any data point. Some things aren't your business, Zuckerberg/Facebook/app developers/third-party websites, and I've like to have control over saying what those things are.
Facebook is a strangely awful and wonderful place for me.
Although I only friend friends (SIDENOTE: While I fully support the verbs, "facebooking" and "googling," I do not like the verbs "friend" and "unlike"), the connections I have with my FB friends run the gamut: my brother, a friend I've known since birth and two I've known since preschool, overseas cousins, my best friends from high school (and damn, the things they know about me!), my godmother, tons of folks from my hometown (which I have removed from my Facebook profile but can't seem to erase from my own memory files), former grad school colleagues, former coworkers, friends' parents, friends' kids, my kid.
I feel compelled to make a motley crew/Mötley Crüe joke only because of the timing last summer of my twenty-year high school reunion when suddenly I reconnected with all these folks I hadn't thought about for, well, twenty years. And it was fucking awesome. I love that Facebook has put me back in touch with folks from my childhood, from my teen years. I love it that I can easily keep abreast of what my cousins are up to. I love it that Facebook reminds me when to write Happy Birthday on people's walls, because seriously, I suck at remembering that stuff.
So yeah, Facebook is a pretty personal space for me. (Note, I said personal, not private.)
But sometimes of course Facebook is creepy, and I shy away from it. Sometimes it's creepy because of friends' photos. Sometimes it's their wall posts or the comments. Sometimes it's the quiz results. Sometimes Facebook is awkward when I have to think twice about what I should or shouldn't say or share. Sometimes Facebook is a scary reminder of what people think. And sometimes Facebook is creepy because, well, simply Facebook itself. Like, wanting to make our data default public? Creepy.
I get it though. I get that there is a lot of really cool data, and an amazing social graph we can draw of who we know, what we know, what we like. I am sure there are amazing things we can learn and damn cool API we can make based on the wealth of public information on FB.
But I really don't need Facebook to use information it gleans from me give me a personalized experience online. I'm fairly adept at personalizing my own experience, thank you very much. And I really, bottom line, I want someone to get mypermission first before they mine my personal data. I'd like to have granular control over what I share and with whom. I am totally cool that OK Go know I'm a fan, for example, but I'm not sure I want EMI to know (and god forbid you tell Columbia Record House -- I think I still have to buy 8 more cassettes at the regular price). And I'm not sure I'm cool with you knowing that I was a fan of the guy who threw the shoe at George W. Bush just because you've made an app so I can play word games (wait, yes I am). And I know for a fact there's no way you could begin to understand what it means to be a fan of the world famous Wonder Bar -- well, if you were my friend on Facebook, perhaps you would, and that's precisely the point.