Another Privacy Issue for Social Networks
In a previous post we discussed privacy issues with Facebook’s Beacon service. This week Google has been criticized for opening up Google Reader. Google Reader has allowed users to ’share’ items in their reading list for awhile now. Recently Google tweaked the product so that shared items are shared with everyone in a users Google Talk list. As a CNET article states:
But, as anyone who uses instant messaging knows, not all of your IM contacts are friends. Many are acquaintances or people you barely know and with whom you may not want to share a reading list.
This is an interesting dilemma for developers of social networking products. I’m sure that Google is only trying to open the system up to allow for more interaction between users. Yet at the same time users are saying, “Whoa, not so fast, I want to choose my interactions”. In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t represent a huge problem in privacy and in fact Google has posted directions to limit the user one shares with. However libraries should watch these issues closely. As OPACs, citation management software, and other services open up for library users we will all be faced with similar concerns over privacy.
The lesson here, open is good, but only as far as the user wants it to be.
Bart