Privacy concerns
So just how will these positive and negative impacts of microblogging on traditional blogging pan out? That remains to be seen, but there is another aspect of microblogging and social networking that has many observers of the Internet concerned. Could these new platforms in fact be too fast and too convenient, leading to users inadvertently exposing a little too much about their private lives?
President Obama himself has said, in a talk at a Virginia high school, that kids need to be careful about exactly what they put up on the Facebook pages.
"I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life. And when you're young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. And I've been hearing a lot about young people who... you know, they're posting stuff on Facebook, and then suddenly they go apply for a job and somebody has done a search," said Obama, giving this group of teenagers a valuable warning about revealing too much on such sites.
Kuan Chung-hsiang, assistant professor of telecommunications at National Chung Cheng University and chairman of Taiwan Media Watch Foundation, supports such advice. He notes that with the advent of highly interactive, Web-2.0-style social networking sites, our "online identities" are no longer as anonymous as they once were, and in fact have started to become an extension of our "real lives."
Take Facebook for example. Not only does Facebook encourage users to enter their full names, it also offers the ability to pull your contact list from your email, and if it does this for everyone, it makes it easy for the company to build up ever more detailed maps of interpersonal relationships. While Plurk, Twitter, et al. don't require a real name, it can nonetheless be relatively easy to look at how and to whom users talk and build up similar maps and figure out exactly who a given user is.
"You shouldn't be lulled into posting just any old thing because you think the only people that can read it are those on your friends list," emphasizes Kuan, as modern Internet search technology and password hacking methods mean that once you post something, it could potentially be seen by anyone. Before you post anything-message, photo, whatever-you must remember that it will be seen, and that once it is on the Internet, it is essentially there forever.
George Liu is also emphatic about this. In the age of the Internet, we can never be sure who will see what we put online, "and more concerningly, if someone has a mind to they can readily find out who you are, who you're friends with, and what you've been doing lately."
The strengths of microblogging are its conciseness, instantaneousness, and convenience, which make it a great tool for getting your thoughts and feelings out or just getting in touch with friends. This photo shows Plurk's distinctive "timeline" interface, which makes it easy for your friends and fans to click on, read, and respond to any message you have posted.