You probably think of yourself as a decent human being who doesn’t go around pissing off your friends. But because we are all human beings it is inevitable that you will make some assumption that is not true, or not shared by the other person, or just not think something through from the other’s perspective and thus come across as insensitive or worse.
Here are a few things to consider before, and after, you put your foot in your mouth in an online situation:
Just in case anyone still has any assumptions about privacy on Facebook:
A friend of my partner sent her a private FB message mentioning having a certain type of not-average medical procedure… and 24 hrs later I started seeing ads in my FB feed for variations on that same procedure, which had not been pitched to me previously.
Since we are both friends with that person, plus J and I are listed in our FB accounts as being in a relationship, this is an example of how FB targets ads based on what keywords they are seeing pass through ANY part of your account AND the accounts of people with whom you are connected.
This is also an example of what can be done while still probably adhering to a privacy policy. FB, Google, etc say that they don’t give identifiable information about individuals to advertisers – but I’m sure that use of that keyword in the message plus my being linked on FB to both people in that conversation resulted in my account ID # being lumped into a batch of IDs used to target an ad using that same keyword.
So again, a reminder: do not post anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want to see featured on the nightly news or in another public forum.
[Also check last week’s post on keeping your public FB posts private]
Who can see what you post on Facebook is a tricky concept. After numerous complaints FB made a lot of changes to their privacy settings but it’s still complex, and not all of the settings are “sticky” – you may think you are fine but unknowingly did something that makes everything you subsequently post a LOT more visible than you thought.
The most dangerous privacy slippage I’ve seen recently is one that may be setting ALL your status updates to be publicly visible – including to job interviewers, co-workers, etc.
These days when people are promoting a local happening they usually create a Facebook event (and frequently ONLY that for PR – but this is not about the limitations of that as a PR scheme).
So often I feel like banging my head on the monitor when I see how some folks undermine themselves through not understanding the details necessary for a Facebook event to be found and seen by their audience.
I was planning to list a number of tips, but explaining how to do this first one is sufficiently complex that I’ll save the others for a later post!
If your event is a personal social activity (e.g., a birthday party), go ahead and create it as your personal Facebook persona. HOWEVER – if the event is an activity by a “corporate” entity such as your band, your catering service, etc. it is important to create the event as your “Page” persona.