Are Public Check-Ins Worth The Risk?

Photo by Adam Selwood

Without wishing to overly alarm those of you (or whose kids) use FourSquare or similar services, here’s a real-life example of what I cautioned about in my Gee-Oh!-Location post last September.

In the blog linked below, the author describes how she was stalked by a stranger to a restaurant where she’d checked in via FourSquare.

shea sylvia [blog edition] – A Cautionary Tale.

I have friends who work for geolocation services, who may wish to argue that this sort of thing is a bad apple that shouldn’t spoil the bunch. I understand the benefits of establishing win-win relationships with retailers one favors. I even understand (sort of) the gameplay aspects.

But if you must “check in,” make sure you do so privately to your friends also on the service, not to the general public. Because surely, the benefits of doing so publicly don’t outweigh the all-too-real risks.

Related: Think Twice Before You Post That

Thanks to ProducerGirl, whose original tweet about Shea Sylvia’s blog brought it to my attention.

John Baldessari’s In Still Life 2001-2010

Fantastic “interactive still life” by John Baldessari. I dare you not to get drawn into it (so to speak). There’s an iPhone app for it, too. Brilliant.

John Baldessari’s In Still Life 2001-2010.

Heard through @moth and @AnalogC via Twitter.

Think Twice Before You Post That

Photo by Adam Jarmon Brown

Trey Pennington, whom I follow on Twitter, recently recommended the Social Media Examiner blog post Facebook Community Pages: What Your Business Needs to Know. (It’s quite a useful post if you do business on Facebook, and worth reading.) In doing so, Pennington quoted from it the nine most calm, clever, useful words imaginable:

“If you don’t want something shared, don’t share it.”

Landlords, employers, creditors, insurance companies, colleges, law enforcement, that amazing girl you asked out – they all search Google and social media to find out more about you before deciding to take (or keep) you on. Potential thieves, resentful exes, jealous colleagues, prankster friends can all take screen shots, download content or keep tabs on you. (Note: click on the links in the first sentence of this paragraph to read real-life examples.)

So think twice before you post. All of us need to remember that whatever we publish online, no matter how seemingly innocuous it is, MAY end up being seen, saved or copied by anyone. Even if your account is set to private. Even if you only have a few Twitter followers. Even if “nobody” reads your blog.

A few examples:

• Regardless of whether your Twitter account is set to private, your tweets could still show up in the RSS feed of people you haven’t allowed to follow you. It won’t be every tweet, but if they have a keyword search saved via RSS, it might pull in even protected tweets that contain the designated search string. I’ve seen it happen in my own search feeds.
• A Facebook “friend” of a friend of mine downloaded one my friend’s photos, and it ended up being published elsewhere without his knowledge or permission.
• Another friend, finding himself in the position of job-hunting, took his Twitter profile private since he regularly uses it to detail his, shall we say, extracurricular activities. Which is fine prospectively; future tweets will be private (excepting the afore-mentioned search loophole). What he may not realize is that all his previous tweets, which were public, have already been indexed by the search engines. If an employer is searching for them, they’ll be found. And there’s nothing to stop someone with access from taking a screen-shot of the now-private tweet stream anyway (happens all the time to celebrities on the gossip blogs).
• I’ve previously blogged about how publicly posting your whereabouts, including via geo-location tags, can put you or your home at risk.

So before you choose to badmouth your boss, brag about your booze-up, complain about your client, or wax rhapsodic during your Hawaiian holiday: think twice, and make sure you’re prepared to live with the consequences of everyone knowing it.

From the Home Office

My friend Alex almost always signs off Twitter of an evening with a goodnight message. They tickle me, these tweets, because in them she regularly invents new words to refer to her collective followers. No pedestrian “tweeps” for Alex.

Among my favorites:

Goodnight, Tweepsicle

…Tweetson (sometimes Tweeterson).

… Twitches

… Tweepsies

… Tweetiepop

… Tweetifer (sometimes Tweetipher)

… Tweetypie

… Tweetbitches

… Tweetsicle

She’s also the only one who’s ever gotten away with calling me “Arleney,” but somehow it makes sense when she says it.

What are your favorite terms for people on Twitter?

My Follow Philosophy

Everyone has his or her own policy about following people on Twitter. Here’s mine: I follow accounts that speak to my personal and/or professional interests. They can be news feeds; fellow entertainment and media types; punsters; those who share my hobbies and passions; public figures I admire; friends of friends. But there’s always a specific reason and intent that I follow. I don’t automatically follow back everyone who follows me, for a number of reasons:

Interests are asynchronous. Just because I’m interested in what you have to tweet doesn’t mean you’re interested in what I tweet. The reverse holds true. We’re all grownups (or should be). I do generally reply to people who @ me even if I’m not following them. The reverse often holds true. It’s not a matter of hurting feelings. It’s just life.

Many of the accounts that (attempt to) follow me are spammers or bots. It’s easy enough to determine this; on the email notification about the follow, they have few to no followers, few to no tweets, and are following hundreds of people. Not only don’t they get a follow back, they get an automatic block.

The best tools in the world won’t help you sip from a fire hose. Unless you’re spending all day on Twitter (and I know some do), it’s just not possible to follow the tweets of several thousand – or tens of thousands – of people. You could decide to pay attention only to the ones who mention you, of course, but you can do that without following them. You can separate them into groups in a 3rd-party app like TweetDeck- but you could do the same thing by creating a list and checking it periodically. And you don’t need to be following someone to add them to a list.

Indiscriminate following leads to spams and auto-DMs. Most of the people I see complaining about spams and DMs are people who follow everyone who follows them, or who follow accounts without regard to the “quality” of the account.

Privacy. Anyone you follow can send you a DM. My preference is to limit that channel of communication to the extent possible.

Should everyone practice this philosophy? Not necessarily. Anyone using Twitter as a customer service tool shouldn’t, for example. Many customers prefer to communicate via direct message – and many companies would prefer that grievances be aired through private channels.

However, this is the way I currently manage my twitter feed with respect to follows. What’s yours?