Getting In Touch With People From Your Past
Seeing I have been in the online social space since 2003 I am used to communicating with people from my past and present. People from my childhood getting in touch with me to say hi and to see how I am doing along with people from my present wanting to know more about me. I am completely fine with that but in some circles I am in the minority. So recently some people I know, people who don’t operate in the online social sphere have been complaining to me and this is what they had to say, “This person from when I was a kid is trying to get in touch with me over Facebook, WTF do they want? Don’t they know if I wanted to get back in touch with them I would have by now?” Now this wasn’t just from one or two people, this was from at least 20 or more who I have heard discuss this very topic.

I was kind of surprised by what these people had to say, especially seeing they are the ones who signed themselves up for these social networks in the first place. These are the same people who held out till the last second to get a Myspace account and are now having to switch to Facebook because we all know that Facebook killed the Myspace star. With the migration to Facebook you are no longer anonymous. People can’t just make up some weird name of phrase and have that as your alter ego shielding you in the shadow of anonymity. So the once a upon-a-time Myspacer’s who had a hard time entering the social profile world to begin with due to their over active paranoia on personal info on the web are now struggling hard with the idea of not only being on the web but also being “themselves” on the web. Even if you are not online and you stayed away from the social networks your information is still online. Companies like Intelius, PeopleFinders and ZabaSearh have and openly distribute your personal information online for years.

Understanding the flow of information on the web is crucial to having this data work for you and not against you. Setting up these social networks allows you to control the information that is out in the world. Would you rather have someone find a record through intelius on you (which shows your former addresses, people related to you, their ages etc) or would you like them to see and find you on Facebook first? In most cases the Facebook profile is the one you want them to see. You crafted it, put the right pictures into it and filled out the information on it hence you are controling that message. Much like a proactive PR firm would do, you are telling the story before someone else gets the chance too. Not only that but most use Facebook now as a people search function and only when they can’t find who they are looking for they turn to google and other services to find you (Forty/Love – Facebook is killing it).

So yes, these free social networks, the ones where you can stay in communication with all the people you want to talk to in your life, all in one place now comes with a price, the price of being yourself online for the whole world to find. Funny thing is your information was always online even if you weren’t; might as well control the message.