Social media applications are making efforts to help reign people in from sharing too much with the wrong audience, but it’s still not easy.
Recently, a slide deck from a gentleman by the name of Paul Adam of Google has made its way online entitled “The Real Life Social Network”. Although it tips the scales at over two hundred slides, it is well worth your time as Adam’s outlines user’s online behavior in participating in social networks. The key theme in the deck is that those of us who are active participants in the social media landscape have various types of relationships that we engage in online via tools such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. and quite often there is too much noise generated from ourselves at these overlapping audiences. When you post an update to Facebook for example, you may intend you message to be relevant to a subset of your Friends, however, all of your Friends see the update.
The emergence of this presentation is further fueling speculation that Google is going to make another foray into the social media space. Google already has Orkut, an online community similar to Facebook, but with no where near the foothold. One would hazard to guess that this may be the place that Google would implement these social best practices.
As for Facebook, there is the ability to manage your Privacy Settings and customize your posts to specific groups of Friends via Lists. MakeUseOf.com has a good article regarding this, however the vast array of options and settings is in my opinion too complex for your average Facebook user.
Segmenting your audiences for messaging has been a feature that has been around in some fashion for a while now in other tools such as Twitter and is gaining momentum with other applications. Just this morning, Brizzly announced Brizzly Picnics, where one can develop groups of contacts and share posts, content such as photos and video as well as chat solely within the group. With Twitter, one can connect their Twitter account to other social media applications such as Facebook and LinkedIn and have a Tweet appear on those platforms by adding an application specific hashtag (#fb for Facebook, #in for LinkedIn).
Personally, I dabble in many different social platforms. Using a social media aggregation tool such as Digbsy is an easy way for me to maintain multiple accounts across various platforms. I find it easier to maintain multiple Facebook accounts, personal and professional, via a third party application rather than regularly segmenting posts and lists within Facebook. However, if you tend to gravitate towards a single social application rather than another, I’d highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with how to maximize your Privacy and audience settings within that tool.
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For more than five years now I’ve been managing numerous websites for a global software company. When I first started I inherited a site that offered content in French, Thai and UK English. These local language sections offered probably about 10% of the US English content. When it came time for a site redesign we made a concerted effort to expand the footprint of the international sites and further expand the number of languages to reflect our global reach.
Sigh. I tend to be a bit of an idealist. There are some things that I wish to be above reproach and to keep pristine. That’s why when I read a recent article in 
The Internet is a crazy place and as a parent it can be a daunting thing to ensure your kids aren’t going to come across the wrong thing online. My wife and I limit our children’s time online, but at the same time, we want them to be comfortable using a computer and the Web as tools to aid them in their schoolwork as well as for fun. What I’d recommend to parents who are just venturing into this territory is to approach this much like you’d approach other situations with your children: do some research; talk with your friends; explore on your own.
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