FACEBOOK: WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

In relation to this weeks reflective post on a newstory or blog discussion ive chosen to present some articles which have a made quite a large impact on the headlines in the past week or so. Im sure most of you are aware of the new facebook application which in the past few days launched in Australia! For those of you who don’t know it’s an application where facebook users can share their current location with friends. It’s pretty much the "ability to broadcast your location makes the social network that bit more indispensable to the millions who use it to organise their social lives." Cellan-Jones (2010) The launch of the application and these articles made me think of the week 5 topic: Self. Info: Identity where in our tutes we discussed the whole JenniCam saga. I remember discussing the possible reasons for why people were so intrigued by it to continued to follow it Jennicam religiously each day, even if was only be sitting at her computer. In addition, it made me think of why people feel the need to post their whereabouts on facebook. I mean apart from this new facebook places being a good opportunity for businesses to get their name out there, it can promote all sorts of trouble. It blurs the lines of the virtual world being public or private all over again...its been said that “facebook places is the perfect tool for burglers, stalkers, suspicious spouses, and nosy bosses”. I personally think, its that bit ‘too much’ information. Although It is up to us to control our facebooks, by chosing what to put on it and post and what not to, it still opens up avenues for a type of cyber-crime. Can we rely on just ‘our friends’ seeing what we’ve posted. Do we live through the virtual world so much that we feel its necessary to find out where our friends are all the time, is it that necessary to post our whereabouts on the internet? I'm not sure if we can clasify the internet as 'safe'. Here's another article which goes in to detail about social networking sites online privacy. Also, this video is conducted by fox news and talks about the new facebook application being a privacy risk. Enjoy!