Grown Up Thinking

At some point over the last year many of us have realized that some of what we post on Twitter may not be what we’d like to share with all of our followers. Unfortunately for those in that situation, Twitter does not have privacy settings like Facebook that allow you to choose who can see what information that you share, so what do you do when you realize that your personal life is crossing over into your public life? The answer is simple – make a second account!

The first question you should ask yourself when doing this is, “Why am I using Twitter and what am I trying to accomplish?”. There are many reasons why having multiple accounts makes sense. You can segment your Twitter traffic based on your interests, focus content on different topics and develop larger followings across different fields. I will admit that I ran in to the same problem on Twitter which actually became more of a positive than a negative. Now that I have two Twitter accounts I can share personal content with my close group of friends and network with other professionals. In fact, I recently discovered that 53% of Twitter users have multiple accounts which is why Twitter management software like HootSuite and TweetDeck have become so popular.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter was already developing a new platform to improve some of the organization and privacy issues that are plaguing many users- but until that day comes, I’ll have to keep up with my (not so) secret double life on Twitter. You can call me Bond… James Bond.

In the continuing saga of Facebook’s effort to formalize its Terms of Use policy, the social network today launched an app that will allow users to vote on which version of the governing document they prefer.

The central debate here revolves largely around the issue of privacy and content ownership, and previous efforts to announce a final resolution on the topic were met with a huge public outcry.  Wronged users complained that Facebook should not have the right to own or even use user-posted content at their own discretion, whether or not that was Facebook’s intention.  In response, Facebook turned to users to provide feedback and inform a new version of the terms.

Where has this netted out? The revised rules state:

“You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings.”

However, the same section goes on to say:

“You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.”

Will this provision satisfy users who were aghast at the previous version?  Facebook took a great step by embracing user collaboration to revise the rules, but have they gone far enough? The social media world will wait with bated breath to see how the vote pans out on April 23rd.  Something tells this user that the revised rules will prevail. Regardless, the revised version is sure to spark some serious debate.