Wednesday 19 May 2010

I'll not be leaving Facebook yet either...

Below is my Facebook profile. It's a little bit secret. If you google my name you will not find it. And if you search for me in Facebook you will not find it. My privacy settings exclude me from search. So you can only find my profile if you know one of my friends already (or you click on the link in the networked blogs widget at the side!). I've always keep my privacy settings high on Facebook. I get all green lights from the privacy scanner (http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/facebook). And yes, I have no choice but to have a public profile, but I don't mind the level of information it gives about me.
My Facebook Profile
Sarah Stewart has blogged saying that she won't be leaving Facebook on "Quit Facebook Day". She connects with many midwives there that she would not otherwise. My use of Facebooks is more personal. But in the last few days I also decided to start a Facebook page to support my teaching. I was worried that it would come across 'creepy treehouse', so I sent an email to students making clear that it would only aggregate content that they could already find through Blackboard. I don't expect this page to be interactive as I already use the walled garden discussion forums of Blackboard heavily. And this piece of work involves contact with patients so discussion on Facebook would be completely inappropriate. 

As Matt Assay has shrewdly observed, the geek elite may be moving on, but the mainstream (including me) are just settling in.