Robert Scoble's Facebook Cortex
warrenellis.comScoble is the counterexample to mature restrained online presence.
There's been a lot made of the oversharing which occurs with teens and 20-somethings on Facebook and other social networks, often painted as a generational change.
For those of us who were alive and tech-conscious in the 1990s, there was a very similar trend, though rather smaller (as the Net and Web were also much smaller), of a small number of high-profile "online diarists" who shared, often fairly compulsively and excessively, life details.
Some remain online, some have largely disappeared, some are much more muted than previously: Eve Astrid, Xeni Jardin, Rebecca "Net Skink" Eisenberg, Violet Blue, (many were notably women), and some of the early bloggers: Dvorak, Ito, Weiner, and others.
Andersson at last check worked for Google. Jardin continues to blog for Boing Boing, though more quietly since a dust-up with Blue and recent breast cancer diagnosis. Eisenberg is corporate counsel at a tech company. Blue continues her sex blogging, though less prominantly than I recall. Life, jobs, relationships, breakups, kids, and the like, tend to take the edges off over time.
It's something I'm presuming FB and G+ will discover over time. Google's approach has been more nuanced in part, I suspect, as its creators were more mature than Facebook's.
Past age 35 or so, the most voluble social networking types tend to be those with a vested interest in noteriety. Mostly marketers, entertainers, other media types, technology evangelists, CEOs, and VCs.
I recently learned that Scoble lives in a gated community. I find that the contrast between real-world privacy and virtual world exhibitionism fascinating.
I don't think there is a real comparison. Living in a gated community would provide better home security and a quieter, safer neighbourhood. It doesn't really have anything to do with privacy/sharing.
WTF...I don't see how this is even related. Have you thought for a second that Scoble's family (his wife and kids) live with him?
In fact, everything that is related to Scoble "personally" is public. You want his direct email, direct phone, cell phone etc, you have it.
I wasn't really trying to imply anything other than it was an interesting contrast. I'm not sure why his wife and kids come into it - is it not possible to be safe if you don't live in a gated community?
There is no such thing as absolutely safe; if your threshold is high enough (and for many rich westerners thinking about their children, it is) then it really is not possible to be safe enough if you don't live in a gated community. (Of course, if you're rationally applying that high a threshold then that implies never driving your kids anywhere).
Meh. There are things that are normal for Scoble and that which is normal for the rest of us. For every piece of frictionless sharing gold, there are 5-10 pieces of crap to filter through.
"Because, of course, Facebook is all about you being able to take your data out of it."
You don't need to be able to take your data 'out' of Facebook to use it in contextual applications. That's what they have an API for. For example, Highlight can look at all my likes and compare them with the likes of the people around me to show me people with whom I have similar interests.
This guy has become a caricature from a cyberpunk novel, maybe without the cool clothes. He's so insufferably pretentious. Why is he popular again, something about Netmeeting?