As the reach of social networking and social media continues to expand, developments such as Facebook Groups come as no surprise. Online or offline, social relations can be very similar – whether the connections are fleeting, accidental, weak or whether connections are closely meshed in everyday life or work – there can be little to differentiate many offline and online relationships. So it makes sense for users to have similar controls over their connections online as they do offline.
As this Gigaom posting reveals, users (when given the choice) may prefer to restrict their availability and presence to after-work friends or other selective relationships according to their context. Some users have multiple profiles to focus on specific interests. Having personal and professional profiles on Twitter seems to be a more commonly practised now. Over the last year or so social media guidelines have been developed or refined to keep pace with social media and government 2.0 developments.
I’m in two minds about this. Like many others, I’ve found the open nature of the social web to be engaging and insightful. I have connections with people who I would not have dreamed of having seven years ago. More generally, opportunities for innovation and creatively enabled by the social web have been game changing everywhere.
However, what concerns me is that the trend to having social gateways in place is likely to be a limiting force in terms of forging new social connections. I can see that gaining more control over who you want to see what you are up to at any one time is clearly a good thing in terms of privacy. It’s likely to help build more confidence and trust in making use of the social web.
So having the choice to be open or closed is a positive development. Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel that the ease in which users can move from open to closed relationships online is likely to be of significance in shaping the future direction of the social web.
