AGAINST SOCIAL PROMISCUITY !!

A REAL VIRTUAL SOCIAL EXPERIENCE: The social part of "me" should be based on autonomy groups (different colors exemplify different groups - family, friends, work, etc…). The public part of "me" is the undifferentiated light grey.

Have you ever rejected your old aunt as a Facebook friend? Have you ever untagged a photo of you drunk in a stupid party just because it would be inappropriate for your "friend" boss to see? Why do your friends need to know that you went to your grandmother's funeral? That's exactly the point here!…

Social networks tend to standardize the access to your content, to make it "public". Up to date, it is expected that family, friends and work share every information you throw on-line. Do virtual social networks creators imagine the future in such social promiscuity? Do they shimmer a world with a complete absence of secrets, relation's specificities, confidences, values?!

Well, we all know the real world isn't like that! Our industrial revolution brought us the urban achievement - the individual capacity to manage different autonomy beats (family, friends, work, etc.), different socio-spacial quotidians. The new content promiscuity seems a regression to some rural way of life - where everyone knows everything about you, where you have no autonomy at all.

But here you may argue: "Hey! Facebook can deal with groups when sharing your content!" Yes, I know! But what I claim here is that these groups should be at the very base of any virtual social service rather than a complicated and lingering option. The idea here is that there should be a base directory for establishing your contacts and groups (in relation to real life) which would be applied on every virtual network (such as Facebook, Flickr, etc…).

As I imagine it (according to the actual biggest Web structures), Google should provide something called "googlePEOPLE" which would embody both contacts and ways of correlating them. Then, other structures (Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, etc…) would always use "googlePEOPLE" groups/contacts in their user interface as some kind of tabs.

I really expect the Web to get closer to our real life and relations; so we can tweet and share content in a healthy and easygoing way… Google and Facebook, hope you're reading this!

Go to the facebook group at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=117726071573783