Facebook, Twitter, and the End of Privacy

A sample of my facebook minifeed:

• Ian Isles just checked in at La Casa de My-Linh.
• Corey Wonderkidd: just had sex! LOL
• Phun Keedoc: Enjoyed the 1st day of the new year. Spent time with my momma, then battled alongside my dear lil Nik, hung with my SPC dance beasts (Switchstep & invent), watched so many amazing acts @ the Newstyle Motherlode fundraiser event incldg the beautiful & talented women of Mixd Ingrdnts. Naw, we didn't win but were in the finals against a crew of 5 very skilled young kids. No shame there. :) Yes, I'm smiling.
• Ian Isles: my dad, nonchalantly, recorded and showed me a video he took just now of my dog humping her bed.
• Jobu Cordoba has been tagged in 5 photos
  
• Taylor Shiells: So, Twilight has made me consider something: Does anyone else find the idea of love at first sight shallow and unromantic? What exactly is supposed to be endearing about loving someone without any intellectual connection at all.
• Lawrence Wong: I hate stepmoms

I remember when I first started a Facebook account 6 or 7 years ago, back when it was a rather small networking tool among college students. What I cannot remember is when exactly it became a social crutch or such a large part of my life. I sort of feel jealous of the small handful of people I know who have never even bothered with setting up an account, but apparently not jealous enough to get rid of my own.

In the last several years I saw Facebook grow. When it began, I only saw friends from school with profiles. Once it opened up to anyone over 13 years old, I started to see my aunts and uncles, professors, businesses, and even babies and pets with Facebook profiles. Moreover, although Facebook alone became a monstrous networking tool, it began to join hands with other extensively used sites like Yelp, Twitter, iTunes, and tumblr. Once the numbers of new applications grew rapidly, I was able to know where everyone was, what songs they were listening to and videos they were watching, what they were eating for lunch, what they just purchased with their credit cards, and who they were hanging out with.

Even the way in which people portray themselves and their lifestyles through Facebook status updates and Twitter seems to have evolved. In its early stages, "the minifeed" had raised some concerns. Facebook's way of notifying all of your friends of the moment you change your relationship status or publishing on their minifeed what you write on your friend's wall created a buzz of discontentment; it seemed a bit invasive. But perhaps we became accustomed to the invasion. Not only that, perhaps we even began to enjoy it by manipulating it. As my friend Jardy recently wrote in his own facebook status, "you can tell when someone has a new crush by how often they update their profile picture, facebook info, and status"

CNN featured an interesting article about the ways in which people have grown comfortable with airing their private business, which can be viewed here