This week has been all about social media, which encompasses a ton of information as new sites and features to older sites are popping up constantly. More specifically we delved deep into the social media giants, namely Facebook, which seems to have taken over the social networking world…for now.
We were asked if we think the social web needs its own Bill of Rights and pointed to one that has been created by four men who are much more invested into the social media scene than I. Their Bill of Rights is meant to stand up for and protect users of social media and directed at the sites that host those users, like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. The short document asserts that we should have ownership of our personal information and have control over what we share of that information. These to me seem like no brainers and as far as I understand what I get with my Facebook account. So yes, I agree with their Bill of Rights but guess I didn’t even realize it was necessary to have, maybe I am missing something?
To me a more relevant bill or rights I found in a blog from a search marketing firm aimClear. It lays out the Friendship Bill of Rights within social media, which is also extremely relevant to class this week as we examined “friendship” online. Within the online world of friends it seems we either have to keep our networks small and abide by the rules we do with offline relationships, accept any and all friendships online and have a world of spam that makes it relatively useless, or be somewhere in the middle by setting up some hard and fast rules to abide by. I’m more inclined to try and follow the ladder of these three and that is why I like this particular Bill of Rights because it says things like, it is okay to say no to a friend request (which I hate doing).
It seems we can’t be afraid to ask for exactly what we want from the sites that host us and that also goes for the people we interact with online. If social media is going to be worth spending our time with we want it personalized to our specifications and demand some modicum of respect. In some ways it seems like a lot to ask for a service we get for free but with advertising dollars on the line and new sites coming up constantly vying for our attention what do you expect.
