More importantly, do we even want it to be? Social media has resulted in an era of openness, the likes of which we haven’t seen before. We broadcast publicly on Twitter, have no problem telling all our Facebook friends how hung over we are, or what we plan to wear to work one day. and share photos on Flickr that are visible by all. There seems to very few areas where we favour privacy, instead opting to share everything with the world, knowing that if we do so the benefit back will be significant.

I’ve no doubt that this is more of a ‘Gen Y’ thing. I have trouble convincing less tech-savvy people to be public by leaving comments on blogs etc.. as there is that element of fear that if anyone can see what you’re saying, you can ultimately be judged by it as well. It certainly takes time to school yourself into this way of thinking. I like to think of myself as particularly active through social media, yet I only recently opened up to the possibilities of being ‘public’ on Google Reader. At first, I was sceptical, preferring to keep this as my little private online sanctuary. Having now started following people, sharing articles and adding my own comments to readers. I am getting more out of the service than ever before and am glad I’ve started to use it in this way.

There is also a level of expectation around other user’s willingness to be public. I very rarely request to see a private account on Twitter, as I think it’s using the medium in a way it wasn’t intended.  I’ve no desire to request to follow someone if I’ve no idea what it is I should be following. It is certainly the number one reason (after spam) that I would not follow an account, but this is due to the own rules that I’ve set and some might argue that it’s fairly elitist to expect everyone to be as open as I might be.

As we are starting to manage more of our lives online, not only social networking, but private messaging, managing bank accounts and ecommerce, I wonder what will happen to the issue of privacy. It may very well be an alien concept in a few years time as we expect everyone to be open and share their personality online. The trend is certainly heading this way through location based services such as Foursquare where we are bringing together our physical, offline selves with our online selves. It’ll be interesting to see how far this goes and also what developments will be made in the way of protecting people online.

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