How socially private are you?

The world of social networks is changing the entire concept of privacy.  Like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently said that privacy is not a social norm anymore. I have been mulling over this for a bit now -how much information am I willing to give out?  How public am I willing to make my private life? Will I be peer pressured into it?  These thoughts led me to study some habits of social networkers and categorize them in three profiles based on how private they wish to be.

1. The Watcher: He believes firmly in his privacy or he probably doesn’t care about the virtual world much. Of course he has been pushed to join Facebook because his friends are on it and he can stay in touch with people without necessarily communicating with them. He watches everything. His friends’ status updates, photos, comments. Once in a while he “Likes” a link or a status, since that does not need him to present an opinion. He rarely updates his own status except when he is waiting at an airport or he watched an outstanding movie.  You know he is active since he accepts friend requests everyday on Facebook.  He joined Twitter but never went back to it. He didn’t understand the concept of following and being followed by random people. Or even if he did, he tweets irregularly. He has a Linked In profile but not completely updated. He reads blogs but never comments on them. He watches YouTube but never rates the videos. He absorbs.

2. The Engager: He is active on Twitter and Facebook and engages his followers and friends with experiences, opinions and interesting links. He realizes that Twitter is not just about making friends or gaining followeres, but about networking. Social networks are a great source of  up to date information for him.  He does not like too many conversations (@replies) on Twitter but retweets often. He probably even has automated ways of updating his status with feeds he reads, or music he listens to. He is active on Facebook and has his Facebook and Twitter statuses synced. He does not tweet pictures of himself all the time except for something nice he may have seen. He controls his Facebook privacy settings to selectively display his information/photos/opinions to his known friends’ circle or acquaintances. He may even have a personal social network of real known friends and a public one of people he has met online. He has a blog but updates it infrequently. He leverages the networking aspect of social networks, absorbs a lot, contributes moderately and at the same time protects himself from giving away every bit of his life to the hands of advertisers.

3. The Omnipresent: He is willing to lay his life in a platter out in the open. Privacy is definitely not a social norm for him.  His status updates on Facebook and Twitter are frequently accompanied by photos and videos of himself and his environment. He is a great conversationalist and responds to almost everything directed at him. If he eats at a restaurant, he Yelps. If he reads something interesting he Diggs it. If he does something, anything, of course he tweets and blogs about it. If he even plans/intends to do something, he Plancasts. He reviews and rates religiously, a true contributor. He syncs his credit card transactions with Blippy and doesn’t hesitate to tell the world what he spent where, how and when. Every time he goes to a place, a restaurant, a grocery store, gym, work, bar ..anywhere he checks in to FourSquare thereby revealing his location so his friends can find him.  If you track his life with the sequence of his updates you can probably figure out when he took a restroom break (or maybe there is an app for that too). If you Google him he is omnipresent, in time, in place, in deeds.

How socially private do you think you are?

Uploading photos from Picasa to Facebook with one click

Isn’t it a pain to upload pics to Picasa once and then to Facebook? Thanks to some cool developers there is an app to do that for you in one click. You need to install a plugin.

Go to PicasaUploader

Click the big black button on the page to launch Picasa and install the plugin.

In the list that pops up, select the new “Facebook” button and click “Add” to place it in the button tray.

You will see the Facebook button on the menu at the bottom

Now select any photo(s) and click the newly added Facebook button and the app will upload your photos from Picasa directly to Facebook. You will of course have to enter your facebook credentials when uploading

Once uploaded, it will open your Facebook album in a browser and ask you if you approve the photos uploaded by that app. Select all or the ones you want to approve and click the Approve Selected Photos button at the bottom.

That’s it. Done! Happy Uploading.